Highest Mountains in Japan

Geography

Mount Fuji is a distinctive feature of the geography of Japan. It stands 3,776.24 m (12,389 ft) tall and is located near the Pacific coast of central Honshu, just southwest of Tokyo. It straddles the boundary of Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. Four small cities surround it - Gotemba to the east, Fujiyoshida to the north, Fujinomiya to the southwest, and Fuji to the south - accompanied by towns and villages. It is surrounded by five lakes: Lake Kawaguchi, Lake Yamanaka, Lake Sai, Lake Motosu and Lake Shōji. They, and nearby Lake Ashi in Kanagawa Prefecture, provide views. The mountain is part of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. It can be seen more distantly from Yokohama, Tokyo, and sometimes as far as Chiba, Saitama, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Lake Hamana under skies.

Geology

Mount Fuji is located at a triple junction trench where the Eurasian Plate, North American Plate, and Philippine Sea Plate meet. These three plates form the western part of Japan, the eastern part of Japan, and the Izu Peninsula respectively. The Pacific Plate is subducting beneath these plates, resulting in volcanic activity. Mount Fuji is located near three island arcs: the Southwestern Japan Arc, the Northeastern Japan Arc, and the Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc. The Fuji triple junction is only 400 kilometres (250 mi) from the Boso triple junction.

Fuji's main crater is 780 m (2,560 ft) in diameter and 240 m (790 ft) deep. The bottom of the crater is 100–130 m (330–430 ft) in diameter.

History

Mount Fuji is widely regarded to have an attractive volcanic cone. It has been a frequent subject of Japanese art, especially after 1600, when Edo (now Tokyo) became the capital and people saw the mountain while traveling on the Tōkaidō road. According to historian H. Byron Earhart, "in medieval times it eventually came to be seen by Japanese as the "number one" mountain of the known world of the three countries of India, China, and Japan". The mountain is mentioned in Japanese literature throughout the ages and is the subject of many poems.

The summit has been thought of as sacred since ancient times, and was therefore forbidden to women.

Climate

The summit has a tundra climate (Köppen climate classification ET). The temperature is low at high altitude, and the cone is covered by snow for several months of the year. The lowest recorded temperature is −38.0 °C (−36.4 °F) recorded in February 1981, and the highest temperature was 17.8 °C (64.0 °F) recorded in August 1942.

Fuji's seasonal snowcap appears at an average date of 2 October. In 2024, the snowcap formed on 6 November, the latest-occurring since records began in 1894.

Geography

Tateyama is located in southeastern Toyama Prefecture. At the base of the mountain is the town of Tateyama which is accessible by train from the prefecture's capital city, Toyama. Public transportation takes climbers and tourists as far as the Murodo Plateau Station at an elevation of 2,450 m (8,038 ft), where individuals may climb to the peak on foot. This location allows for the formation of snow and its accumulation, forming glaciers. These are the only glaciers identified in Japan so far.

Mount Tate is the source of two rivers, both flowing to the Sea of Japan.

Geology

The mountain is primarily composed of granite and gneiss. However, located along the ridge and plateau, about 2 km (1.2 mi) west of the summit, there is a small andesite-dacite stratovolcano. This volcano has an elevation of 2,621 m (8,599 ft) and has minor eruptions, the latest occurring in 1961.

Geology

Mount Asahi is an active stratovolcano, 2,291 metres (7,516 ft) in height that arose 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) southwest of the Ohachi-Daira caldera. The Japan Meteorological Agency gave the region rank C in volcanic activity. The volcano consists mainly of andesite and dacite, Holocene volcanic non-alkali mafic rock less than 18,000 years old. In addition to the main peak, there is a smaller volcano emerging from the southeast shoulder of the mountain, Mount Ushiro Asahi or Rear Mount Asahi (後旭岳, Ushiro-Asahi-dake).

Mount Asahi currently exhibits steam activity in the form of fumaroles.

Geology

Mount Iwate consists of a younger eastern symmetrical stratovolcano (Higashi-Iwate, "East Iwate") overlapping an older western stratovolcano (Nishi-Iwate, "West Iwate") which has collapsed to form a caldera. Nishi-Iwate was formed approximately 700,000 years ago, and forms two-thirds of the mountain body. Higashi-Iwate was a later (300,000 years ago) parasitic volcano, which now forms the summit of the mountain. The oval-shaped, 1.8 x 3 km caldera of Nishi-Iwate has a 0.5 km wide crater, partially filled by a crater lake called Lake Onawashiro. Several somma including Yakushidake, the largest, surround the more recent Higashi Iwate crater rim.

Geography

Sakurajima is a stratovolcano. Its summit has three peaks, Kita-dake (northern peak), Naka-dake (central peak) and Minami-dake (southern peak) which has been recently active.

Kita-dake is Sakurajima's highest peak, rising to 1,117 m (3,665 ft) above sea level. The mountain is in a part of Kagoshima Bay known as Kinkō-wan. The lava flows of the 1914 eruption connected it with the Ōsumi Peninsula. The former island is part of the city of Kagoshima which is only 4 km (2.5 mi) across the bay. The surface of this volcanic peninsula is about 77 km2 (30 sq mi).

Sakurajima is part of the Kirishima-Kinkowan National Park, and its lava flows are a major tourist attraction. The area around Sakurajima contains several hot spring resorts.

Geology

Sakurajima is in the 25 km (16 mi)-wide Aira caldera, which formed in an enormous "blow-out-and-cave-in" eruption around 28,000 years ago. Several hundred cubic kilometres of ash and pumice were ejected, causing the magma chamber underneath the erupting vents to collapse. Tephra fell as far as 1,000 km (620 mi) from the volcano. Sakurajima is an active vent of the same Aira caldera volcano.

Sakurajima was initially formed about 3000 years later and has had 17 large-scale pumice eruptions since. It is about 8 km (5 mi) south of the centre of the caldera, on its rim. Most of the lavas and tephra erupted have an andesitic-dacitic composition but there are some rhyolite composition eruptives.

History

After the volcano formed about 26,000 years ago BP, until recorded history times only the largest eruptions can be identified. Pumice layers P4 to P17 include the P14 vary thick layer from a VEI 6 eruption over 10,000 years ago.

Its first eruption in recorded history was in 963 AD. Most of its eruptions are Strombolian, affecting only the summit areas, but larger Plinian eruptions have occurred in 1471–1476, 1779–1782 and 1914.

The 1914 eruption (also known as Sakura-Jima eruption or Taisho eruption) began on 11 January and was the most powerful in twentieth-century Japan. The volcano had been dormant for over a century until 1914. Almost all residents had left the island in the previous days; several large earthquakes had warned them that an eruption was imminent.