The Ascent of Fujiyama
grims unquestioningly accept. It is said to have risen up in a single night two thousand years ago, when a great depression appeared to the southward, which the waters of Lake Biwa immediately filled. For a thousand years pilgrims have toiled up the weary path to pray at the highest shrine and to supplicate the sun at dawn. Fuji-san, the goddess of the mountain, hated, it is said, her own sex, and stories of devils, who seize women and fly off into the air with them, still deter all but the most emancipated Japanese women from making the ascent. It was after Fuji-san had quarrelled with all the other gods that she set up this lofty mountain of her own, where she might live alone and in peace. No horse’s foot is allowed to fall on the steep approaches to her cloudy throne, and even the sand and cinders are so sacred, that whatever dust is carried down on the pilgrims’ feet by day is miraculously returned by night. Even to dream of the peerless mountain is a promise of good-fortune, and Fuji, with the circling storks and the ascending dragon, symbolizes success in life and triumph over obstacles.
Until the year 1500, Fuji wore a perpetual smoke-wreath, and every century saw a great eruption. The last, in 1707, continued for a month, and threw out the loose cinders, ashes, and lumps of baked red clay that still cover the mountain. Ashes were carried fifty miles, damming a river in their path, covering the plain at its base six feet deep with cinders, and forming an excrescence on the north side, which still mars the perfect symmetry of the cone.
Umagayeshi, or Turn Back Horse, is four thousand feet above the sea, and the other eight thousand feet are surmounted in a distance of fifteen miles. We desired to reach Station Eight by four o’clock; either to sleep there until three o’clock the next morning, or to push on to the tenth and last station, rest there, and see
179
