Mount Fuji is famous less as a mountain than as an idea: when UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 2013, it did so not for natural value but as a "sacred place and source of artistic inspiration." The physical mountain is a 3,776-metre active stratovolcano, the highest point in Japan, built up over tens of thousands of years as layer upon layer of lava and ash buried two older volcanoes and smoothed the whole into its signature near-symmetrical cone. Its last eruption, the Hōei event of 1707, tore a new crater in the southeastern flank and dusted the streets of Edo — today's Tokyo, about 100 kilometres east — with ash. For centuries the peak has been worshipped in Shinto and Buddhist practice, home to the blossom goddess Konohanasakuya-hime and the goal of the Fuji-kō pilgrim cults; women were barred from the summit until 1872. Katsushika Hokusai's "Thirty-Six Views of Fuji" later carried that silhouette into the wider world.
Climbing season is short — roughly early July to early September — and its great prize is goraikō, the sunrise watched from the summit above a floor of cloud, a ritual pilgrims have chased for generations. Far more travellers, though, meet Fuji from below: the mirror-image "reverse Fuji" on the still water of Lake Kawaguchi, one of five lakes at its foot, or the view of the red five-storey Chūreitō Pagoda, spring blossom and snow-capped peak lined up in one frame after a climb of some 400 steps. Reaching the top is no longer a simple walk. Since 2024 access has tightened sharply: for the 2025 season all four main trails charge a 4,000-yen climbing fee, the popular Yoshida route caps arrivals at 4,000 people a day, and its gate closes from early afternoon until the small hours to discourage exhausting overnight "bullet" climbs.