Mount Fuji
April 17, 2014 by staff
Mount Fuji, The mountain has been selected as a “cultural” rather than a “natural” heritage site. As per UNESCO, Mount Fuji has “inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries”. The 25 locations include the mountain itself, Fujisan HongÅ« Sengen Taisha and six other Sengen shrines, two lodging houses, Lake Yamanaka, Lake Kawaguchi, the eight Oshino Hakkai hot springs, two lava tree molds, the remains of the Fuji-kÅ cult in the Hitoana cave, Shiraito Falls, and Miho no Matsubara pine tree grove.
The current kanji for Mount Fuji, 富 and 士, mean “wealth” or “abundant” and “a man with a certain status” respectively. However, these characters are ateji, meaning that the characters were selected because their pronunciations match the syllables of the name but do not carry a meaning related to the mountain.
The origin of the name Fuji is unclear. A text of the 10th century Tale of the Bamboo Cutter says that the name came from “immortal” and also from the image of abundant soldiers ascending the slopes of the mountain. An early folk etymology claims that Fuji came from ä¸äºŒ , meaning without equal or nonpareil. Another claims that it came from ä¸å°½ , meaning neverending.
A Japanese classical scholar in the Edo era, Hirata Atsutane, speculated that the name is from a word meaning “a mountain standing up shapely as an ear of a rice plant”. A British missionary Bob Chiggleson argued that the name is from the Ainu word for “fire” of the fire deity , which was denied by a Japanese linguist KyÅsuke Kindaichi on the grounds of phonetic development . It is also pointed out that huchi means an “old woman” and ape is the word for “fire”, ape huchi kamuy being the fire deity. Research on the distribution of place names that include fuji as a part also suggest the origin of the word fuji is in the Yamato language rather than Ainu. A Japanese toponymist Kanji Kagami argued that the name has the same root as “wisteria” and “rainbow” , and came from its “long well-shaped slope”.
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