The 100 Famous Japanese Mountains: the 1964 List That Chose a Nation's Peaks

In 1964, the Japanese mountaineer and writer Kyūya Fukada (1903–1978) published Nihon Hyaku-meizan — "100 Famous Japanese Mountains". Fukada had climbed all over the archipelago, and his list was personal: one hundred peaks chosen not by height alone, but by three tests he set himself — dignity (品格）, history （歴史） and individuality （個性）. As a rule of thumb he also required a peak to stand at least 1,500 metres high.

The rule has famous exceptions, and they prove the tests mattered more than the tape measure. Mount Tsukuba, in Ibaraki, is only 877 metres — the lowest peak on the list — yet it has been celebrated in poetry since ancient times and stands in this guide as peak No. 44. Mount Kaimon in Kagoshima (924 m), Mount Ibuki in Shiga (1,377 m) and a few others — Meakan (1,499 m) and Amagi (1,405 m) among them — also fall short of 1,500 metres and are also on the list. At the other end, the list is crowned by Mount Fuji (3,776 m), followed by Mount Kita (3,193 m) and Mount Hotaka (3,190 m).

The list runs the length of Japan: nine peaks in Hokkaidō, from the island volcano of Rishiri to the great Daisetsu massif, down through Tōhoku, the Japan Alps of Honshū, and on to Shikoku and Kyūshū, ending at Mount Miyanoura on the cedar island of Yakushima. Completing all one hundred — hyaku-meizan bagging — became a life project for generations of Japanese climbers, and the book remains in print. An English translation by Martin Hood, One Hundred Mountains of Japan, was published by the University of Hawaiʻi Press in 2014.

Every mountain in this guide is one of Fukada's hundred, in his order, numbered as in the original list. Each page gives the peak's elevation and location, checked against Wikidata, and the full text of its English Wikipedia article where one exists — so you can read the geology, the history and the climbing routes of each mountain in one place.

Facts in this article are drawn from the Wikipedia articles "100 Famous Japanese Mountains" (English) and 「日本百名山」(Japanese), CC BY-SA 4.0, and from the list data used throughout this guide.