While summer leisure climbers bus it halfway up the mountain to Mount Fuji’s “fifth station” and hike overnight to conquer its 12,388-foot peak, I’d travelled here out of season in the spring to seek both her spirituality and a respite from the treadmill of modern life. My one-day hike on her sacred lower trails was part of a three-night journey created by Japan specialist Kammui. As well as hiking, it includes visits to Fujikō sites including Yoshida Tainai, a cave created by an ancient lava flow that is revered as a womb of the Mount Fuji goddess; and introductions to custodians of Fujikō traditions, such as mother and son Taeko and Shinya Tanabe. Their long-established oshi lodge, Daikokuya, has simple and elegant tatami rooms, and generous feasts of vegetables and game foraged and hunted by chef Shinya around Mount Fuji reveal the family’s deep connection to the mountain, which stretches back 19 generations. “My cooking is an expression of the spirituality we find in nature,” said Shinya.
As well as Ota and affable, English-speaking mountain guide Daisuke Kiguchi, I was led by Fujikō follower Shunji Katsumata. “Mount Fuji is very beautiful, but climbing it is difficult,” he explained on the morning before the hike. “But that difficulty forces you to think about your life and reflect on it, so both your physical body and your spirit become stronger.” He handed me a white, wraparound gyoi jacket with kimono-like sleeves, the traditional garb of a Japanese pilgrim, signalling rebirth. I wore it as we travelled to Kikuyabo, a centuries-old lodge, to meet a working oshi family. Eighteenth-generation priest and owner Shinichi Akiyama inked a woodblock carved with images of monkeys and Mount Fuji’s goddess Konohanasakuya-hime. Pressing my pristine robe into the black ink, I lifted it carefully, transferring the auspicious seal. Climbing Mount Fuji was, and still is, dangerous, so oshi such as Akiyama provide such rituals to ensure success.