Time to rewild Mt Fuji?

Japan's top Meizan would be less crowded if everyone started their climbs from the mountain's foot.

On March 17, the Shizuoka prefectural assembly voted to make everyone climbing Mt Fuji from the south pay a ¥4,000 fee. Starting next summer, the fee will apply to all climbers using the three trails starting on the Shizuoka side of the mountain – the Gotemba, Subashiri and Fujinomiya routes.

This brings Shizuoka into line with Yamanashi Prefecture, on the mountain’s eastern side. Yamanashi’s officials had already decided to double their existing climbing fee to ¥4,000 from the summer of 2025.

However, Shizuoka will not attempt to limit the number of climbers using its trails at any one time. By contrast, Yamanashi Prefecture seeks to limit the number of climbers on its popular Yoshida route to 4,000 climbers a day, although it’s not clear if it has yet applied this restriction in practice.

Both prefectures will attempt to deter “bullet climbers”- those who try to climb the mountain in one all-night push – by requiring climbers to have booked a hut if they start up the mountain between 2pm and 3am. Again, it’s unclear how this policy will be enforced.

If 90,000 people climb Mount Fuji from the Shizuoka side, as expected in the coming summer, the increased fee could raise just under ¥400 million, the Nikkei has reported. The money will fund staff to collect and manage the fees at each trailhead, provide multilingual guidance for tourists, and provide safety and environmental measures. But will it solve the problem of overcrowding on the mountain trails?

When Yamanashi introduced its climbing fee and other measures last year, the prefecture’s governor, Nagasaki Kotarō, said they were intended to curb “overtourism”. In the past, Nagasaki has also flirted with the idea of converting the Subaru Line road to the mountain’s fifth station into a light railway. This, he thought, would allow the authorities to better control visitor numbers.

Governor Nagasaki is probably thinking along the right lines – as a climbing fee alone is unlikely to curb visitor numbers, it might be more effective to restrict access to the mountain. But would a light railway make enough of a difference? Perhaps a more effective solution is to abolish all forms of transport – whether road or rail – to the mountain’s various fifth stations?

The aim would be to “rewild” Mt Fuji – or, at least, restore the mountain to its status before the first access road was built in 1964. Would-be climbers would then start low down the mountain – for example, at Fuji-Yoshida’s railway station (809 metres) rather than the terminus of the Subaru Line road at 2,300 metres. Or at the JR station at Fujinomiya (121 metres) rather than the Fujisan Skyline’s carpark at 2,400 metres.

You’d keep the roads, of course, but reserve them for rescue vehicles and supply trucks to the mountain huts and teahouses. A longer climb for would-be summiteers would thin the crowds, and generate new business for restored huts and teahouses further down the mountain. Meanwhile, Mt Fuji’s famous forests would get some relief from diesel fumes.

Rewilding should also solve the problem of “bullet climbing”. After all, few have the stamina to do an all-night push through more than two or even three vertical kilometres…

It would be the climbers themselves who would stand to gain most. Instead of experiencing Mt Fuji as an overcrowded, clapped-out Instagram destination, they’d start off through those dignified old-growth forests at the mountain’s base and come out above the clouds through their own efforts. Along the way, they'd rediscover the rewilded Mt Fuji as a real mountain. 

References

Asahi Shimbun (English edition), “Shizuoka joins Yamanashi to charge 4,000 yen for Mt. Fuji climb”, 18 March 2025.

Nikkei Shimbun, 静岡県、富士山入山料は4000円軸来夏から初導入, 13 December 2024.

New glaciers found in the Japan Alps

A survey by Niigata University and others has confirmed that two more snowfields in the region around Shirouma (2,932m) qualify as "glaciers." The new ice streams bring the total of relic glaciers discovered in the Northern Japan Alps to seven or so – joining the three discovered on Tsurugi and Tateyama in 2012 and two more subsequently found on or around Shirouma.

NHK Shinshu announces the discovery of the new glaciers.

The two newly confirmed glaciers are located under the Kaerazu-zawa and Shakushi-zawa snowfields. The latter can be seen from Hakuba Village at the foot of the Shirouma (“White Horse”) massif. Shirouma is one of Fukada Kyūya’s One Hundred Mountains of Japan.

The view from Hakuba Village.

A snowfield, says NHK (see references below), is defined as a localised area of snow that remains even in the summer. It qualifies as a glacier when it meets certain criteria, such as the ice masses within it moving at a certain speed.

In a survey conducted by Niigata University and others from 2021 to 2022, it was confirmed that an ice mass with a maximum thickness of 43 meters in the Shakushi-zawa snowfield moved up to 26 centimetres in about one month, and an ice mass with a maximum thickness of 29 meters in the Kaerazu-zawa snowfield moved up to 14 centimetres. A paper summarising the survey results will be published in an international scientific journal.

Locations of the Karamatsu-zawa and Kaerazu-sawa snowfields.

There are now four snowfields in Nagano Prefecture that have been confirmed to be glaciers, including the Kakunesato snowfield on Kashimayari (2,889m), another of Fukada’s One Hundred Mountains, and the Karamatsu-zawa snowfield above Hakuba Village.

Researchers on one of the Shirouma snowfields.

As quoted by NHK, Professor Narama Chiyuki of Niigata University, who conducted the survey, said "The impact of global warming on the Japanese Alps has not been fully understood due to a lack of long-term observation data. We believe that the newly discovered glaciers can be used as an indicator of environmental change, and we would like to continue observing them in the future."

References

NHK Shinshū news web, 白馬村の２つの雪渓 新たに「氷河」と確認 新潟大などの調査, 20 January 2025.

Yama to Keikoku magazine, 北ア白馬の２雪渓新たに’氷河’と確認, March 2025 edition.

A meizanologist's diary (96)

20 January: no need to worry about snowshoes, the Sensei said last night, this is just a day hike up a 400-metre hill. Still, the hill in question looks impressive enough as it rears into the morning mists drifting over from Lake Biwa. 

There must be some good reason that our club’s president has selected it for a mid-week Wanderung in a neighbouring prefecture – I mean, surely we have mountains enough of our own back home.

Walking through a large torii, we start up a steep set of stone steps. These lead up to a rocky platform surmounted by a granite tor and, tucked into a recess beside it, a small pavilion dedicated to the Eleven-Headed Kannon. The fog has started to clear, so that we can look down onto the surrounding rice fields and factories. This part of Shiga Prefecture feels crowded compared with our own inaka.

We continue along a wooded ridge – although the preposition “along” seems to embrace a prodigious amount of “up” and “down” as well. Lunch is taken on a col after surmounting one of these interim peaklets. 

Then, restored by our rice balls, we tackle another set of well-made steps up to a shrine dedicated to the rain god – as depicted in the form of the dragons holding up the peak sanctuary’s shingled roof. 

Exquisitely carved as they may be, these effigies don’t seem to be a Sehenswürdigkeit worthy of our three-hour drive this morning. What could our president be thinking of when he chose this destination?

As we happen to be walking side by side, I think of asking him but we are distracted by the discovery of a cricket’s moulted husk lying on the trail – as if to recall Bashō’s haiku about the cricket chirping from under the fallen warrior’s helmet.

It’s curious to find such a relic of summer on “Daikan”, the Great Cold of January, which happens to fall today. The sun comes out, and jackets come off, as we walk out onto a south-facing terrace. Behind us, surmounting a natural cliff, are the remains of a huge wall, built of irregularly shaped blocks.

A distant rumbling reaches our ears. On the plain below, two bullet trains are passing each other. This must be the Tokaidō Shinkansen: so we have traversed the whole of Kinugasa-yama from north to south. I see that we are strolling through the ruins of what must once have been a puissant castle. Whoever commanded these heights would have controlled the main route between east and west Japan.

Passing through the remains of a postern gate back into the forest, we walk up into a grove of flowering sazanka trees. Admiring how the blooms of this “winter camellia” glow crimson in the warm sunlight, it takes me a moment to appreciate that the trees are hemmed around by the walls of a great hall or courtyard. Whoever built this castle evidently found themselves on the wrong side of history. 

A placard enlightens us. It was apparently one Niwa Nagahide (1535–85) who reduced this fortress for the last time, bringing to an end the rule of a local warlord. Local traditions still point out the ravine into which fled the garrison’s women and children. Were the sazanka trees planted as a memorial to them?

I’m still lacking the big picture – who attacked whom, when and why. But January days are short, even if Daikan lacks its traditional bite, and we need to get down before dark. A long flight of steps takes us down to an old temple, whose gate-keeper mulcts us of a few trumpery coins for the privilege of using the stone-flagged path.

The walk to the nearest station takes half an hour, during which a few raindrops spot down from the late-afternoon cumulus build-up. While waiting for the 15.56 local train back to our starting point, I notice we’re on the platform of the JR Azuchi station.

“Is this the same Azuchi that figures in the Azuchi-Momoyama period?” I ask. That’s right, confirms K-san, Azuchi stands for Nobunaga, and Momoyama for Hideyoshi: Niwa Nagahide stormed the castle because it got in Nobunaga’s way on his march to Kyoto. The country could not be unified until Nobunaga could walk in triumph through its gates... 

There’s standing room only on the train, as schoolchildren have occupied all the seats. After all, this is a weekday and the country has been at peace for eight decades.