Funiculars on Mt Fuji (2)

Continued: could a light railway be built on Japan’s top mountain - in order to save it?

Growing international tensions put paid to the 1940 Tokyo Olympics as well as any further thoughts of building a railway on Mt Fuji. But the enthusiasm of the projectors was only briefly dampened. As early as 1946, the businessman Iwao Kōtarō (1894-1953) envisaged building a gigantic wind turbine on the summit. With blades spanning a hundred metres, this apparatus would generate power for a funicular dragged uphill by a “mole-type cable”.

Iwao’s proposal died with its protagonist. The debate, however, rumbled on. In its August 1949 edition, Yama to Keikoku, then as now Japan’s most popular mountain magazine, challenged its readers with the question “Fuji cable [car], yes or no”. Opinions were solicited from a panel of the great and good in Japan’s mountain world.

Leading off on the ‘yes’ side was Nonaka Itaru (1867-1955), who back in 1895 had won fame for himself and his wife Chiyoko by his attempt to overwinter atop Mt Fuji to make weather observations. This is what he said:

A Mt Fuji cable car was first envisaged by an Italian 50 years ago, and I thought that this would be most helpful for my winter sojourn up there. But the proposal did not come to anything, and since then there has been plenty more smoke, but no fire. The idea has always succumbed to the tyranny of practical thinking and died. And so it has been to this very day. But on this occasion, the three prefectures are working together, not contending with each other as in the past, and specific discussions are being held …

If the YamaKei feature is anything to go by, it seems that the scientific temperament generally favoured the idea of a cable car. Also lining up in support were Makino Tomitarō (1862-1957), known as the father of Japanese botany, and the distinguished geophysicist Tanakadate Aikitsu (1856-1952). Tanakadate said that, not only did he support a cable car, when the time was ripe, but he’d even toyed with the idea of getting a concession for one back in 1895-96, so that he could use it to fund Nonaka’s summit observatory.

As if to complete this triumvirate of scientific talent, Imanishi Kinji (1902-1992), the scholar-alpinist who famously challenged Darwin’s interpretation of natural selection, weighed in. Now that anybody could look down on the mountain from an aeroplane, he opined, it was “odd to keep thinking of Mt Fuji as a sacred summit”, adding that the more people who could make the ascent by cable car, the better.

By contrast, many of the literary types stood aghast. A leading opponent was Tanabe Jūji (1884-1972), the Wordsworth scholar who had let Yama to Keikoku’s founder use the title of his mountain memoir as the masthead of the new magazine. Mountains are not just about the summit view, he said. Rather, it is their general aspect that counts. And surely one could think of better places to put a cable car than Mt Fuji …

Uno Kōji (1891-1961), as one might expect from the author of a novella called Love of Mountains, was even more succinct: “As for the thought of putting a cable car up Mt Fuji, I am absolutely against it.”

In 1956, the conservationists won a partial victory when the Ministry of Health and Welfare stepped in. By designating the slopes above Mt Fuji’s fifth station as a candidate for a special protection area, the officials effectively put them off-limits to would-be railway entrepreneurs.

But the projectors too were appeased when permission was granted for a 30-kilometre-long road up to the fifth station on the Yamanashi side. This project became the Fuji Subaru Line, opening in the Tokyo Olympics year of 1964 – the annus mirabilis that also ushered in the Shinkansen, the Mt Fuji summit radar installation and the publication of Japan’s most famous mountain book.

May 1964: the Fuji Subaru Line road is opened with a parade of Subaru cars
(Photo: Subaru Web Community - see note below)

Soon enough, there were two roads – the south-side “Skyline” from Fujinomiya opened in 1969 – but even this couldn’t stop the train promoters: Fuji Kyūko, the local railway company, proposed one in 1964, aiming to facilitate “one-day mountaineering in high heels”. A decade later, however, it withdrew its project application for fear that it “might unexpectedly disturb the delicate balance of nature at high altitudes”.

Of course, the mountain roads were already doing just that. More visitors meant more litter and more sewage, while the exhaust fumes from the nose-to-tail bus convoys added to the pollution that assails the forests on Mt Fuji’s lower slopes.

So what about replacing the road with a railway? That was the aim of Nagasaki Kōtarō, who in 2019 was elected governor of Yamanashi, by tradition a construction-friendly prefecture. In his view, a light railway, powered by green energy, could be built over the existing Subaru Line route. This would do away with road traffic, at least on the mountain’s east side, and it would also make it easier to manage visitor numbers.

Compelling as these arguments may be, they have their critics. Unsurprisingly, one of them hails from Mishima, on the opposite side of the mountain. You could equally well curb the hordes of climbers by limiting bus journeys, points out Watanabe Toyohiro, an environmental scientist quoted in the Mainichi Shimbun.

A railway would also necessitate snowsheds, Professor Watanabe adds, blighting the landscape even more than the road does. And, finally, before a railway can be thought of, there remains a considerable backlog of projects to be completed as a condition of Mt Fuji’s selection as a World Heritage site, such as a new visitor centre.

To mark Mt Fuji's tenth year as a UNESCO cultural heritage site, the Yamanashi authorities have recently revived Governor Nagasaki's proposal for a light railway. Predictably, this move has triggered all the usual reflexes. All in all, we surmise, it may be quite a while before we see any light railway, or funicular or cable car, climbing the flanks of Japan's top Meizan. Still, one can always keep the debate alive….

References

Mainichi Shinbun, Fuji ni keburuka, ukande wa kie (“Cable cars on Mt Fuji float up and fade away”, Yama wa hakubutsukan (“Mountains are museums”) series, 10 February 2021.

Shimizu Masakatsu, "Opinion divided over possible railway for Mt Fuji", The Japan News/Yomiuri Shimbun, 21 June 2023.

Sugiyama Jun’ichi, Fuji-yuki no testudo wa jitsugen suru no ka – kako no rekishi was kanko vs shizen de semegiai (“Will a railway to Mt Fuji ever be realised – the past history is a clash between tourism and nature”), Business Media Makoto, 7 June 2013.

Yama to Keikoku magazine, Fuji keburu no zehi (“Fuji cable [car], yes or no?”), edition no 125, August 1949.

Note

For the opening ceremony of the Fuji Subaru Line on 27 May 1964, just before the Tokyo Olympics, the makers of Subaru cars provided 20 convertible Subaru 360 convertibles and 20 Rabbit scooters as parade vehicles. The Subaru 360s carried up some well known sumo wrestlers, including then ozeki Sada no Yama, Kitanofuji, Tsunenishiki, and Wakanaruto, escorted by about 150 other Subaru cars driven by members of Subaru clubs in the Kanto and Tokai regions. “On this day alone, the Fuji-Subaru line was filled with Subaru cars” says this post on the Subaru Web Community’s website.