Courtesy of the Gotemba city government
Participants in the Mt. Fuji climbing ekiden marathon relay race run up Mt. Fuji in August 2024.
1:00 JST, September 17, 2025
SHIZUOKA — The number of people climbing Mt. Fuji via the Gotemba Trail, on the mountain’s Shizuoka Prefecture side, dropped more than 30% year-on-year as of the end of August, according to sources. This change comes in the wake of the implementation this summer of new rules on entering the mountain.
Starting this summer season, climbers on both the Shizuoka and Yamanashi Prefecture sides of Mt. Fuji are obliged to pay entrance fees and observe several restrictions.
The numbers of climbers on three other routes, the Yoshida, Subashiri and Fujinomiya trails, have remained almost unchanged, so the Shizuoka prefectural government assumes that the fall in visitors to the Gotemba Trail is partly because of a decrease in the number of people coming to use it for trail running.
Runners have lamented the high entrance fee. One of them said, “¥4,000 each time is a lot a to pay.”
Sept. 10 marked the last day of this year in which Mt. Fuji was open to climbers.
“Last year, I climbed more than 10 times, but this year I will only be able to climb three or four times,” grumbled a runner from Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture, as he entered the Gotemba Trail to practice trail running in late August.
Of Mt. Fuji’s four trails, the Gotemba Trail is the one with the greatest difference in altitude from the foot to the summit. This is why it is popular among trail runners, who typically run to the top of the mountain.
A part of the trail for descending the mountain, called Osunabashiri (Big sand run), is particularly favored by runners because they can run straight down along the path, which starts from the seventh station and is thickly covered in volcanic ash.
Many runners participate every year in the Mt. Fuji climbing ekiden marathon relay race, in which runners make a round trip between the foot and the summit of Mt. Fuji. The race is organized by the Gotemba city government.
The local public and private sectors have cooperated to attract visitors through such measures as setting up Mt. Fuji Trail Station, a tourist information facility.
Previously, it was common for many people to come to the Gotemba Trail several times a year to practice running.
But this summer season, after the prefectural government established an entrance fee of ¥4,000 yen per person, many of these runners have cut down on their number of visits or stayed away from the mountain.
A female runner from Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, complained, “It’s hard for me to go to the summit when I think about how it will cost ¥4,000.” She said there are many runners who practice at the foot of the mountain, where they do not need to pay the fee.
A 44-year-old man from Yokohama said, “I would appreciate it if there were seasonal passports.”
According to the Environment Ministry’s statistics, the number of climbers on the Gotemba Trail between July 10, the opening day, and Aug. 31 was 7,510, about 36% fewer than in the corresponding period last year.
Excluding the numbers in 2020 and 2021, when they were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s is the lowest in the past decade.
Visitor numbers on the three other trails were almost unchanged, and the practice of collecting entrance fees for mountains is more widespread overseas, so the effect of this new rule on numbers of inbound foreign tourists seems to have been limited. Only the Gotemba Trail saw a large drop in climbers.
An official of the Shizuoka prefectural government’s department relating to the Mt. Fuji said, “We want to listen to local administration officials and climbers’ associations as we consider the best direction to take with regulations on climbing the mountain, including the entrance fee.”
Masao Kishi, 56, head of the secretariat of the Japan Trail Running Association, said, “Mt. Fuji is a symbol of Japan, and runners visit it from all over the nation. Shouldn’t we start thinking about how to balance preserving the natural environment with keeping it accessible to climbers?”
AloJapan.com