The Tateyama Faith

Mt. Tate has been considered sacred for centuries, drawing pilgrims who believed the climb offered spiritual purification and passage into the Pure Land after death. From the eighth century, ascetics left bronze artifacts at the summits as evidence of their training on the mountain. The volcanic landscape, with its bubbling mud pools at Jigokudani, came to represent the Buddhist hell, and ascending through it symbolized rebirth. By the nineteenth century, an estimated 6,000 pilgrims made the climb annually, and lodging villages grew up around the mountain to accommodate people traveling from across Japan.