Fuji Five Lakes (Lake Yamanaka, Lake Kawaguchi, Lake Saiko,

Five Lakes Born of Fire: A Scenic Heritage Beneath Mount Fuji

On 21 September 2011, Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs added five lakes to the national register of Places of Scenic Beauty under a single entry: Yamanakako, Kawaguchiko, Saiko, Shojiko, and Motosuko. Together they form the Fujigoko, or Fuji Five Lakes, arranged in a gentle arc across the northern foot of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture. Two years later, in June 2013, all five became part of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site "Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration."

The lakes are not simply pretty water at the base of a famous mountain. Each is a record of the volcano that made them, a stage for centuries of religious pilgrimage, and a subject of some of the most reproduced images in Japanese art history.

How a Volcano Built Five Lakes

Mount Fuji shaped this landscape lava flow by lava flow. The three western lakes, Saiko, Shojiko, and Motosuko, were once a single body of water known in old texts as Se no Umi, "the lake of Se." Eruptions divided it. The most decisive event came in the year 864, during the Jogan era, when massive lava from a parasitic vent on Fuji's northwestern flank poured into Se no Umi, filling most of its basin and leaving only the slivers we now call Saiko and Shojiko. The hardened result of that eruption is Aokigahara, the dense forest that today runs along the lakes' southern shores.

That shared origin still leaves a physical trace. The water surfaces of Saiko, Shojiko, and Motosuko sit at the same elevation of about 900 meters, and their water levels rise and fall in unison. Most geologists agree the three lakes remain connected underground through porous lava.

Yamanakako, at the eastern end of the arc, formed differently. Lava flows between the Enryaku era (782–806) and the Shohei era (931–938) blocked the upper Katsuragawa river, ponding water against the Tanzawa mountains. It is the only one of the five with a natural outflowing river, the source of the Sagami River that reaches the Pacific at Kanagawa. Kawaguchiko, dammed by an earlier Funatsu lava flow, took its present shape thousands of years ago.

Why the Five Were Designated Together

The 2011 designation cites two criteria from the national list: criterion 7, covering lakes, marshes, floating islands and springs, and criterion 11, panoramic viewpoints. The wording matters. The lakes were protected not only as bodies of water but as vantage points, places from which to look at Mount Fuji. The protected area includes the lake surfaces themselves and stretches of lava shoreline.

The cultural rationale weighs as heavily as the geological one. The official description points to the Sakasa-Fuji, or "inverted Fuji," that appears on still days, an image central to Edo-period art and to Japan's modern self-image.

The Five Lakes, One by One

Yamanakako is the largest at roughly 6.5 square kilometers, and the highest at 980 meters above sea level. Its shallow basin (about 13 meters at its deepest) freezes in cold winters, and old photographs show ice skating where families now camp in summer. The view eastward across the lake takes in Mount Fuji with the smaller Omuroyama in front, a composition local photographers call Kodaki Fuji, "Fuji holding a child."

Kawaguchiko sits 150 meters lower at 831 meters, the most accessible and developed of the five. Its 19-kilometer shoreline holds hot springs, museums, and the cable car up Tenjozan. The view from the northern shore, with the small island Unoshima between the camera and Fuji, is the classic Sakasa-Fuji that Hokusai painted.

Saiko, ringed by steeper forested slopes, is the quietest of the three western lakes. Its waters reach about 71 meters in depth. The Aokigahara forest grew on the lava that cut Saiko off from its sisters, and trails through that forest end at the lake's southern shore.

Shojiko is the smallest, only half a square kilometer. In the late nineteenth century the British missionary Harry Stewart Whitworth ran a hotel here and called it "Japan Shoji," sending the lake's name into early English-language guidebooks. Its profile, with Mount Fuji rising behind a low foreground ridge, became the model for landscape photographers seeking a less crowded subject than Kawaguchiko.

Motosuko, the westernmost, drops to 121.6 meters at its deepest point. Its water remains cold year-round and transparent enough to see boulders well below the surface. The view of Fuji from Nakanokura Pass, on the southwest shore, is the one printed on the reverse of the 1,000-yen banknote, taken by photographer Okada Koyo in 1935. A trail of about thirty minutes climbs from the parking area to the same vantage.

Pilgrim Routes and Famous Pictures

Long before tourism, the lakes were sacred. The Fujiko, a popular religious movement built around Mount Fuji from the late sixteenth century, sent its devotees on a circuit known as Hakkai-meguri, "the eight seas pilgrimage." The tradition is traced to the ascetic Hasegawa Kakugyo, who is said to have performed water austerities at eight lakes around Fuji. By the eighteenth century the Uchi-hakkai, or inner eight, was formalized as a route, and the Five Lakes formed its heart.

Artists arrived in their wake. In Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (c. 1830–1833), the print Koshu Misaka Suimen places Mount Fuji upright above the Misaka pass and inverted in the waters of Kawaguchiko. Hiroshige answered with Kai Misakagoe in his own Thirty-six Views. In the twentieth century the modern woodblock artist Kawase Hasui made Yamanaka Lake at Dawn, the writer Mishima Yukio set passages of Kyoko's House at Saiko, and the poets Yosano Akiko and Saito Mokichi wrote tanka at Shojiko. The photographer Okada Koyo's 1935 view of Motosuko reached every wallet in Japan when it was chosen for the 5,000-yen and later 1,000-yen note.

Around the Lakes

The five lakes lie within Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, and travel between them is straightforward by car or by the Fuji Kyuko bus loop that connects rail stations at Kawaguchiko and Fujisan. North of the lakes, the Misaka Pass observation deck offers the original Hokusai viewpoint above Kawaguchiko. South of Saiko, marked trails lead into the Aokigahara forest past the lava caves of Fugaku Fuketsu and Narusawa Hyoketsu, both designated Natural Monuments. The Chureito pagoda on Arakurayama, a short distance east at Fujiyoshida, offers the cherry-blossom-and-Fuji composition that draws photographers in April.

The lakes themselves support different uses. Yamanakako and Kawaguchiko have boat rentals, swan-shaped pleasure craft, and wakasagi smelt fishing through holes drilled in winter ice. Motosuko draws windsurfers and divers because of its cold clarity. Shojiko, with no motorboats and no large hotels, keeps the quiet that brought the early foreign visitors.