Which mountain is sacred in Japan and last erupted in 1707?

Mount Fuji, whose Hoei eruption in December 1707 dropped ash on Edo a hundred kilometres away, ruined farmland for years and left a crater on the southeast flank that is still visible. It followed one of the largest earthquakes in Japanese history by seven weeks, and the two are generally thought to be connected.

It has not erupted since, which is not the same as being extinct - it is classified as active, sits where three tectonic plates meet, and has an evacuation plan and a hazard map. A 2011 study found the magma chamber under pressure high enough that the earthquake that year may have brought an eruption closer, and the government revised its projections in 2020 for what an ashfall of that scale would now do to a city of 37 million people.

It was also closed to women until 1868. The mountain is a Shinto and Buddhist sacred site with a long pilgrimage tradition, and the ban was lifted only under Meiji reforms - the first recorded woman to climb it did so in disguise in 1832. It is now climbed by several hundred thousand people a year, enough that overcrowding, litter and unprepared climbers in trainers prompted an entry fee and a daily cap from 2024.