Review

Reviewed Work(s): Mount Fuji: Icon of Japan by H. Byron Earhart

Review by: Gaynor Sekimori
Source: Monumenta Nipponica , 2013, Vol. 68, No. 1 (2013), pp. 110-114
Published by: Sophia University

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no Monumenta Nipponica 68:1 (2013)
Tatsuta, but the combination . . . leaves no doubt about its autumn identity" (p. 69).
The associations were, by the Edo period, strong enough to define the status of these
places as meisho , vestiges of which remain important even today: at Mt. Yoshino,
cedar stands in the Okusenbon portion of the mountain are being felled to make way
for cherry trees to please the hordes of visitors who, in imitation of their Edo-period
ancestors, go to the site made famous by Saigyõ and others for its blossoms.
In general, the path toward the Edo period leads the reader to the complex world
of the urbanités of early modernity, to haikai and haiku, to mitate (visual transposi-
tion) at its most parodie, and to the vitally important development of urban ports
and the new relationship to the sea that these created. Shiranes provocative discus-
sion in chapters 6 and 7 of Edo seasonal referentiality- which was influenced by
urban living, by the importance of sea fish in cuisine, and by scientific discourse and
technology- draws an essential link between the classical past and modern life. The
books conclusion places this discussion even more firmly within the wider net-
work of concerns about the character of urban early modernity and its connection
to modernity and postmodernity. These last chapters are provocative and leave the
reader wanting to linger in the complex world of kaiseki menus, the kabuki calen-
dar, woodblock print art, and tourism - all topics that are part of the growing body
of literature on Edo life and culture both in Japan and abroad. The way in which
Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons underlines the vitality of the classical past
in early modernity, articulating continuity as well as change, mark this book as a
vital contribution to our understanding of the literature, art, and daily practices of
Japan over the centuries.

Mount Fuji : Icon of Japan. By H. Byron Earhart. University of South Carolina

Press, 2011. 262 pages. Hardcover $39.95.

Gaynor Sekimori

SOAS, University of London

In September i860, Rutherford Alcock, consul general at the British legation in

set out from the consulate in Kanagawa with eight companions. They included
Lieutenant Robinson of the Indian navy, who carried "a few instruments for the pur
pose of scientific observations," and Mr. Veitch, "a son of the well-known Lon
horticulturist," who intended to study the mountain vegetation of "Fusiyama."1
"Japanese Ministers" had tried to dissuade Alcock from the "pilgrimage," telling
that "it was not fitting in a person of the rank of a British Envoy to make the pilgr
age, limited by custom if not by law to the lower classes." Insisting, however, th
was "the free right" of the head of a diplomatic mission "to travel all over the empir

1 Rutherford Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of a Three Years Residence in Jap
vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863), p. 397.
2 Alcock 1863, p. 396.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 111

he overcame official objections and f

leader of a virtual pilgrimage group:
under every imaginable pretext, had,
without limit, to the party. ... To ma
with the natives, to which deliveranc
gether there were more than 120 peo
officials, and some 60 porters.
Besides using the expedition for pol
both recreation and observation. To h
picturesque. The contrast between lei
regard to Fuji is neatly encapsulated
who, at Hakone, proceeded to boil his
infinite astonishment of some native at

Once the ascent started, from Mura

southern foot of Mt. Fuji), the part
the fourteenth century, a priest calle
sequently underpinned the Fuji ascen
( nyübu ) practices of other Shugend
Alcock stayed was probably Kõhõji, t
was abolished as a result of the shinbu
leaving the present Sengen Jinja as t
priests" were provided as guides, and
Alcock described the pilgrims as bein
they are careful to have stamped wit
the bonzes located there during the s
mit they hoisted the Union flag, fire
measuring the size of the crater and
clashing variance with the religious ac
Alcocks ascent of Fuji provides a ne
images" displayed by the mountai
described by H. Byron Earhart in Mo
of the imagination, gazed upon from
James Kirkup wrote that climbing F
the physical mountain is also clothed
divine, whether it be the heaven of
of Dainichi, or the realm of Asama
for most of its history, Fuji was trodd

3 Alcock 1863, pp. 398-99.

4 Alcock 1863, p. 415.
5 Alcock 1863, p. 426.
6 James Kirkup, These Horned Islands: A J

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112 Monumenta Nipponica 68:1 (2013)
form of ascesis, whether by professionals (usually shugenja/yamabushi) or lay believ-
ers under their guidance. Saigyö, a religious practitioner as well as a poet, went so
far as to imagine the mountain as a symbol of impermanence, conferring upon it an
existence even further removed from its status as a physical presence.
Though Earharts interests, given his long-term academic concern with Shugendõ
and mountain religion, are firmly focused on Fuji as a sacred mountain, he has used
a wide variety of secondary sources, mainly in English, to present with great finesse
a variegated picture of the "natural, cultural, spiritual, and symbolic drama that Fuji
has played out" (p. 190). Though in places a great deal of material not directly related
to Fuji is provided (as for example in the chapter on japonisme)y this by no means
detracts from the narrative, but rather acts to give rich context, as well as useful
sources for further research on the part of the reader.
The poets and artists who extolled Fuji tended to look upon it as a representa-
tive symbol, generally viewed from a distance. Earhart describes how poems in the
Manyöshü focus on its "aesthetic grandeur," as the "lofty peak" (p. 9), while in the
later Kokinshü and other works, Fujis physical nature is used as a metaphor for love
("deathless/hidden fires," "eternal smoke"; pp. 12-13). The earliest graphic portray-
als of the mountain tended to see it not as an actual Japanese mountain but as an
ideal Chinese one, with three peaks and verdant vegetation rather than snow. Inter-
estingly, in both shape and coloring, the mountain as portrayed in Hata no Chitei s
yamato-e style Shõtoku Taishi eden of 1069 has much in common with the sixteenth-
century Fuji pilgrimage scroll attributed to Kanõ Motonobu (reproduced in the book
as plate 3), as well as with Hokusai s famous "Shower below the Summit" (plate 1)
and Rutherford Alcocks illustration of the mountain "The Ascent of Fusiyama."7 The
dimensions of medieval suibokuga , on the other hand, are closer to the flatter style
of the printmakers like Hiroshige (as depicted in plates 5 and 6). But even today, the
average Japanese will, if asked to draw Fuji, still portray it as a cone with three peaks,
which has nothing to do with its actual shape.
Perhaps the best way to understand the physical mountain, Earhart argues, is in
terms of relationship. This notion appears visually in Hiroshige s One Hundred Famous
Views o/Edo, where Fuji is brought to the capital to legitimate or sanctify it and Edo
is transported to the "realm of the ethereal peak" (p. 102). The presence of miniature
Fujis (fujizuka ) in Edo was another aspect of this idea. Religious practitioners went
into the sacred realm of the mountain to enter a relationship with the divine, and the
mountain can also be seen in terms of divine relationships. For example, as Earhart
explains, the twelfth-century Matsudai Shõnin, in discovering the equality between
the divinities associated with the mountain (such as Asama Daimyõjin, Sengen Dai-
bosatsu, and Dainichi Nyorai), understood that Fuji united the kami and buddhas
and transcended male and female. Ascetic practice on the mountain stressed the
relationship between this world and the "other"; as at other sacred mountains, prac-

7 Alcock 1863, facing p. 425 (chromolithograph by M. and N. Hanhart).

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 BOOK REVIEWS 113

titioners symbolically died on entering the mo

course of making pilgrimage to its sacred si
cises, and emerged reborn. Murayama was th
ment that supervised both its own shugenja
Earhart takes up the various confraternitie
sacred. These groups, he explains, can be tra
to whom the mountain embodied all sacred p
the realm and relieve all suffering. The gro
related to the growth of Edo itself, and com
the course of the eighteenth century cente
and the Miroku-ha of Jikigyõ Miroku. The
came to be known as Fujidõ, which was par
and Rokugyõ Sanshi. Within Fujidõ, radical
inspired Sanshi to take women to the summi
sacred mountains, closed to female access. (
by Sanshi, became the first woman recorded
From the middle of the eighteenth century
greater movement around the country. It w
sure travel, which were often hard to distin
pher Kan (Nakagawa) Tenju climbed Hakusan
Ike Taiga and Kõ Fuyõ; it is significant that
dosha" (pilgrims to the three peaks); dosha w
to lay mountain pilgrims at many sites. Incr
to as a "complex negotiation between visitor
emerged both as "a domestic national symbo
(p. 110). The expansion of the culture of printi
played an important role in this, both domes
From late Tokugawa into the Meiji period,
interests" (p. 122); the Meiji governments cul
ple on banknotes and postage stamps- to co
the light of the mountains history, no new
use in wartime propaganda, Fuji later became
war mission of peace. This change illustrate
tain as an "enduring and malleable icon of Ja
Earhart divides his material into five sectio
Mountain," discusses the natural and cultura
status as an ideal mountain in early poetry
Shugendõ. Part 2, "The Dynamics of a Cosmic
ascetics Kakugyõ and Jikigyõ Miroku and th

8 Mary Beard, Confronting the Classics: Traditions

Books, 2013), p. 236.

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114 Monumenta Nipponica 68:1 (2013)
confraternities. Part 3, "Fuji as Visual Ideal and Political Idea," discusses representa-
tions of Fuji in woodblock prints, and on money and postage stamps. Of particular
interest are the chapter on japonisme, which brings together various sources to give a
wide-ranging sketch of the Western discovery of ukiyo-e, and a subsequent chapter
that frames Japans identity in the modern period, drawing attention to pre-Meiji art-
ists and writers such as Ogyù Sorai, Hiraga Gennai, and Shiba Kõkan and taking up
the appearance of Fuji in Meiji-period school textbooks and the use of its image on
money and stamps. Part 4, "Fuji Devotion in Contemporary Japan," gives an excel-
lent overview of several Fuji-centered religious movements, Fujikõ, Miyamotokõ,
Murayamakyõ, and Gedatsukai. It includes the results of a survey conducted by Ear-
hart of members of three current Fuji groups, data that is useful for identifying dis-
tinctive patterns of Fuji belief and practice. (Earhart also made a valuable film of
these groups in the early 1990s, and this became commercially available in 1998.) Part
5, "Fuji the Flexible Symbol," deals with how Fuji has been used in war and peace for
propaganda, and in commerce as a stereotype and commercial logo. Here Earhart
discusses both Western and "reverse" orientalism, giving as an example of the former
Wanda Jacksons song Fujiyama Mama .
In his epilogue, Earhart reminds us that whatever the future holds, Fuji remains a
tabula rasa, ever adaptable "in a wide range of artistic genres and religious milieux,
as well as in diverse social and political settings" (p. 193). The mountain continues,
indeed, to play various roles in Japans understanding and presentation of itself. The
year 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the arrival in the United Kingdom of five
young men from Chôshù- including Itõ Hirobumi, who would later become prime
minister- to study at University College London. On 3 July, the college hosted a
reception to commemorate this event, during which the university received a dona-
tion of a painting by a descendant of Itõ intended to encapsulate the achievement of
the "Chôshù Five." Its subject? Mt Fuji.

Im Wettstreit mit dem Westen : Japans Zeitalter der Ausstellungen 1854-1941 .

By Daniel Hedinger. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011. 458 pages. Softcover
€45.00.

Michael Facius
Freie Universität Berlin

In his introduction to the book under review, Daniel Hedinger recounts the follow-
ing episode: When Commodore Matthew Perry landed in Edo bay to extract a treaty
from the Tokugawa government in 1854, he had in tow what- in the words of an
observer- amounted to a "full-sized industrial exhibition" (p. 34), including a length
of railroad track and a locomotive. The purpose of this gift was, of course, to impress
the Japanese negotiators and convince them of American technological and military

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