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Mythos Atlas

Japanese PantheonSacred Site

Mount Fuji

Illustration of Mount Fuji, a sacred site of the Japanese Pantheon
Illustrative imageIllustration of Mount Fuji. Generated with an AI image model; not a historical artifact. About our images

Japan's highest and most sacred mountain, believed to be the dwelling place of kami and a source of immortality.

About Mount Fuji

Fire peak, later goddess

Fuji is Japan's highest volcano. Early court myth (Kojiki, Nihon Shoki) does not stage the main kami cycle on its slopes. Asama / Konohanasakuya-hime cult and the Fuji-ko pilgrim associations are historically later. The Man'yoshu already treats the mountain as a numinous sight. Admit the gap: the peak is sacred in poetry and pilgrimage more than in the island-creation narrative. Do not graft Izanagi onto the crater.

On the map

Mount Fuji among other places of the Japanese Pantheon.

Sources and further reading

Source notes

These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.

  • Man'yoshu (Fuji poems, traditional attribution)

    Catalog date: c. 8th c. CE

About this entry

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. . Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.

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