Worshiping at the Summit

Before 1868, Mt. Fuji's summit was a Buddhist landscape mapped onto a lotus flower. The jagged rim of the crater was called the Eight Petals, each peak associated with a different Buddhist deity. Pilgrims walked the Crater Pilgrimage Circuit clockwise, stopping at each one. When the Meiji government ordered a strict separation of Shinto and Buddhism, statues were removed or destroyed, and Buddhist peak names were replaced with Shinto ones. Yakushidake, named for the Medicine Buddha, became Kusushidake. The entire spiritual geography was erased. What exists now at the summit shows no trace of the medieval Buddhist world that once covered it.