[Mt.Fuji] A Mountain Loved by Warriors

Mt.Fuji■A Mountain Loved by Warriors

Warriors in troubled times looked to this mighty mountain for visions of peace.

Mt. Fuji and the Samurai
‘Fuji’ being almost synonymous with a word meaning ‘no death’, the mountain was considered auspicious by the samurai warrior caste. The 12th-century Shogun Yoritomo brought large numbers of his retainers to the foot of Mt. Fuji for his famous ‘surround’ hunting parties, which were both a form of military training, and a demonstration of his prestige as the Emperor’s appointed Generalissimo. When the hunt took place, Yoritomo would dedicate a show of horseback archery to the Sengen Taisha shrine, a tradition that continues to this day, every May at the Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha shrine in Fujinomiya. Mt. Fuji was also commonly portrayed on helmets and armor. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the 16th-century warlord who unified Japan, had a yellow-and-black wool surcoat with a three-peaked Mt. Fuji design above which burned a holy flame, a request to the mountain for divine protection. Tokugawa Ieyasu, who eventually followed him as Japan’s supreme warlord, had ‘Fuji view’ towers erected at his castles in Edo and Hamamatsu. Perhaps, gazing from them at a mountain without equal in Japan, he could dream of a land at peace.