Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Mount Fuji

Starting point is 00:00:00 Located on the island of Hanchu in the middle of the Japanese archipelago lies one of the most important and iconic places in all of Japan, Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji has held an important place in Japanese culture for centuries, as both an important site in the native Japanese Shinto religion and as a subject for artists. Today, Mount Fuji remains an important site for tourism and a subject for modern art forms, such as manga comics. Learn more about Mount Fuji, its history, and its significance on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:46 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Any discussion of Mount Fuji has to begin with geology, because without geology, there would be no Mount Fuji. The Japanese archipelago is part of the ring of fire in the Pacific Ocean. It was created by the subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate, beneath the continental Amorian plate and Okinawa plates in the south of Japan,

Starting point is 00:01:26 and the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Octos Plate in the north. As I've mentioned in a previous episode, these subduction zones often lead to the creation of volcanoes. Mount Fuji is located at a triple junction, where the Amerian, Octos, and Philippine Sea plates all meet. Mount Fuji is stratified as a stratovolcano. A stratovolcano is a volcano that's built up over time with many layers, and they tend to have very steep sides and are very symmetric. Mount Fuji is the highest point in Japan with a height of 3,776 meters or 12,389 feet. Mount Fuji is in many ways the archetype of a stratovolcano.

Starting point is 00:02:06 If you wanted to show someone what a stratovolcano look like, you could just show them a picture of Mount Fiji. If you remember back to my episode on Mount St. Helens, Mount St. Helens was considered to be the Mount Fiji of North America because of its symmetric shape. Ever since humans inhabited Japan, they've had a relationship with Mount Fiji. At first, for thousands of years, the relationship had to do with eruptions from the volcano. What we see today as Mount Fuji is only about 10,000 years old. It was created when an earlier, smaller stratovolcano, known as Old Fuji, began erupting on its west side of the earlier mountain. eruptions from the side of the old mountain eventually built up, covering the previous mountain, creating the Mount Fuji that we see today. The origin of the word Fuji is shrouded in mystery. Some claim it originates from early Japanese words for without equal, and some claim it

Starting point is 00:02:55 comes from the word for never-ending. Still other scholars claim it comes from a word meaning a mountain standing up shapely as an ear of a rice plant. The origin of the word has been speculated to have come from the Anu or the Yamodo languages. The modern-day kanji characters, which are used for Fiji are the character for wealth and man of status. In Japanese, it will usually be referred to as Fujisan or Fujiyama. Both San and Yama mean mountain. And the use of San as a suffix in this case is not the same as its use in Japanese as an honorific. Since humans began keeping records in Japan, there have been 10 to 18 known eruptions of Mount Fuji over the last 1,250 years, depending on how you want to define eruption. The first recorded eruption took place on July 31, 781. The record of

Starting point is 00:03:43 the eruption consists only of a mention of ash falling from the sky. The most recently documented eruption took place in 1707. Known as the Hohi eruption, ash fall from the eruption was so severe that it reached as far as Edo about 100 kilometers away, causing widespread damage to buildings and crops. The ash from the eruption actually caused a famine in Japan that year, as landslides and other blockages prevented the movement of people exacerbating the problem. While it's been 300 years since the last major eruption of Mount Fuji, it is not considered to be a dormant volcano. Many volcanoes have erupted after centuries of inactivity. The religion which is native to Japan is known as Shinto. It is a religion that revolves around spirits and supernatural

Starting point is 00:04:25 entities known as Kami that inhabit places in nature. Mount Fuji holds a special place in Shintoism. At first, over 800 years ago, the mountain was only worshipped from afar. People were not allowed to approach it. The Asama Shrine was established in the foothills near Mount Fiji to try to appease the spirits in the mountain from erupting. There are actually hundreds of Asama shrines in Japan, most of which are within line of sight of Mount Fuji. And those that are not in line of sight usually have some sort of depiction of Mount Fuji in the shrine. In particular, Fiji was associated with the goddess Konohanasakiya Hime. In the early 12th century, people began to climb Mount Fiji as a religious act. Shrines were actually built on the mountain during this period.

Starting point is 00:05:08 During the Tokugawa Shogunate, samurai were trained at a remote camp on the slopes of Mount Fuji, and archery competitions were often held there. One of the biggest changes in the Japanese perception of Mount Fuji took place in 1603 when the capital of Japan was moved from Kyoto to Ido, or the city known today as Tokyo. Fuji is only about 60 miles or 100 kilometers from Tokyo, and it can easily be seen in the distance on a clear day. When the emperor and the capital moved to Ido, Fuji became an even more important part of Japanese culture. Mount Fuji was something that the elite of Japanese society experienced on a daily basis, and people traveling to the capital would pass by Mount Fuji on the Tokaito road. During the Ido period, a Shinto cult developed around the mountain known as Fujiko. The origins of Fujiko came from the Asama Shrine located near Mount Fuji.

Starting point is 00:05:59 Fujiko did exist prior to the Edo period, but Shogun suppressed it. And likewise, it was also suppressed with the start of the Meiji period in the 19th century by mainstream Shintoism. There were three guiding principles of Fujiko. One, if you do good, you are good. If you do bad, you are bad. Two, if you earn, you will be blessed and noble, and your life will be long without disease. Three, if you are idle, you will be poor, have sickness, and your life will be short. One of the most important religious observances in Fujiko was climbing Mount Fuji.

Starting point is 00:06:31 Even common people or those who didn't follow Fujiko would often climb Mount Fuji. The most common practice, which is still done today, is to climb the mountain at night so you reach the summit in time for sunrise. This is called Goraiko, which is Japanese for the arrival of light. At its peak, there were believed to be about 800,000 practitioners of Fuji However, climbing Mount Fuji for centuries was forbidden to women. It wasn't until the Meiji restoration that women were allowed to climb the mountain. On May 4, 1872, the government issued the following proclamation that said, quote, any remaining practices of female exclusion on shrines and temple lands shall immediately be abolished, and mountain climbing for the purpose of worship,

Starting point is 00:07:13 etc., shall be permitted. End quote. The first woman to climb Mount Fuji was Tatsu Takiyama, who actually did it 40 years earlier, technically violating the law. Mount Fuji has played an outsized role in Japanese art. Some of the most significant Japanese paintings and woodblock art used depictions of Mount Fuji. The artist Katsushita Hokusai, usually just known as Hokusai, created a collection of prints titled 36 Views of Mount Fuji, which he released from 1830 to 1832. Perhaps the most famous Japanese work of art,

Starting point is 00:07:45 the great wave off Kangagawa, comes from this collection. He also published 100 views of Mount Fuji from 1834 to 1835. After the Meiji Restoration, the religious significance of Mount Fuji decreased, and it was seen more as a national symbol for Japan. Shinto still hold the mountain as sacred, but not to the degree that it was 200 years ago when Fujiko was still tolerated. One fact about Mount Fuji that most people don't realize is that the peak of the mountain is actually private property.

Starting point is 00:08:13 With the Meiji Restoration, the government nationalized private Shinto shrines. After the war in 1949, these lands were returned to the shrines, except for Mount Fuji. The Schengen Shrine, which used to own the peak of Mount Fuji, filed a lawsuit to get their land back, and they won the lawsuit in 1974. However, it took another 30 years for the land to finally be transferred. Mount Fuji was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013, and today there are about 300,000 people who climb to the summit of the mountain every year. The climb is more like a strenuous walk, and people of most ages,

Starting point is 00:08:48 can do it. The climb usually takes five to ten hours going up and another three to four going down. 80-year-old Jitsu Kawa Yoshinibo holds the record for the most ascents of Mount Fuji. He has summited the mountain over 2,100 times. After he retired, he began walking up to the summit twice a day just to keep busy. His first trip to the summit didn't occur until he was 42 years old. At the start of the episode, I talked about the geology of Mount Fuji and mentioned that it hadn't had an eruption in over 300 years. One big question hanging over the mountain is if it could possibly erupt again. Well, you can't rule it out, and some geologists think that activity inside the mountain might be increasing. The massive earthquake that struck Japan in 2011 may have induced

Starting point is 00:09:32 activity in the volcano. Modeling done by Japanese researchers indicates that the pressure inside Fuji today may be significantly greater than it was before its last eruption in 1707. If a future eruption of Mount Fuji were to take place, we might only have a few months or weeks notice from when activity starts to take place to when an eruption actually occurs. If a major eruption were to take place, on a par with, let's say, the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980, it could potentially cause an enormous amount of damage to Tokyo, including shutting down the transportation systems, communications networks, and the electrical grid. Estimates by Japanese emergency planners say that it could take three days for emergency

Starting point is 00:10:12 vehicles just to enter the city. Mount Fuji isn't just an iconic symbol of Japan. It's arguably the most well-known and iconic mountain in the world. And despite its incredible beauty, it still holds the potential for terrible destruction in the future. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over

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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Mount Fuji

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