Synopsis
Mount Fuji looks timeless, the postcard-perfect cone rising above Tokyo, a symbol of Japan known across the world. But as Andrew Bernstein reminds us, the mountain is still in motion: geologically, culturally, and historically. Its outline may seem immutable, yet Fuji has been remade again and again — by eruptions, by shifting religious devotion, by nation-builders, and by artists.
Our conversation began not with the iconic image but with Fuji’s origins as a violent geological upstart, and how the life of “New Fuji” is a compelling instance of human and geological time matching—and, indeed, merging.
Fuji’s eruptions buried villages and terrified communities, ensuring that awe and dread were as much a part of its reputation as beauty. That danger fed into Fuji’s religious significance. For centuries, it was revered as the dwelling place of deities, a sacred peak approached through pilgrimage and ritual. But even here Fuji’s meanings changed with the times. Different divine inhabitants were emphasized at different times, and reverence for Fuji also changed and altered with the centuries.
By the early modern period, Fuji was both a sacred space and a contested economic one. Shrines managed pilgrimages, villages argued over rights to timber and water, and climbing became a mass movement. Edo artists like Hokusai made Fuji ubiquitous through woodblock prints, turning it into a canvas for human imagination around the world.
Modern nation-builders then seized on Fuji as a symbol of unity. Although long before Fuji had been relatively unknown outside its region, with the center of power in Tokyo, the mountain became Japan’s emblem. Yet even as it was celebrated, Fuji remained changeable. In the 20th century, it bore witness to militarization, mass tourism, and environmental strain. In 2013, UNESCO recognized it as a World Heritage site — but as Bernstein notes, that status is also part of its ongoing reinvention.
Fuji endures as sacred, dangerous, commodified, and inspiring all at once. A mountain, yes, but also a mirror of the people who live in its shadow.
Questions for Reflection
1. How does Fuji’s geology — its eruptions and instability — shape its cultural significance? How is geology fundamental to human history?
2. What can religious devotion to Fuji tell us about the way people inhabit other landscapes?
3. How did pilgrimage transform Fuji from a local site into a national symbol?
4. Why did artists like Hokusai find Fuji such a compelling subject? How have they transformed the way in which we think about Fuji?
5. How do natural landmarks become political or economic battlegrounds? Can you think of some other examples?
6. In what ways did Japan’s modern state “claim” Fuji for nation-building purposes? Why did it do so? How did that change the image of Fuji in both the Japanese and the world imagination?
7. How does mass tourism change the meaning of a sacred site?
8. Near the end of their conversation, Bernstein and Zambone discussed the grasslands around the foot of Mount Fuji, and their use as a military training center (now a join base for the United States Marine Corps and the Japanese Self-Defense forces). What does that story capture about environmental history? About how we now divide the “natural” from the “artificial”?
For Further Investigation
Andrew Bernstein, Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Harvard University Press, 2025)
H. Byron Earhart, Mount Fuji: Icon of Japan (University of South Carolina Press, 2011)
—, Japanese Religion: Unity and Diversity (Wadsworth, 4th ed., 2004)
Timon Screech, The Shogun’s Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1600–1829 (Reaktion Books, 2000)
Henry D. Smith II, Hokusai: One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji (George Braziller, 1988)
UNESCO, World Heritage Listing: Fujisan, Sacred Place and Source of Artistic Inspiration