ABSTRACT
The mountain appears to have originated in extensive volcanic activity some 600,000 years ago, but probably did not acquire a separate and distinctive shape until 300,000 years ago. Since then, there have been three volcanoes in the vicinity, known to geologists as Komitake, Ko Fuji (Old Fuji), and Shin Fuji (New Fuji). The last of these, which became active 10,000 years ago and gradually obliterated the earlier two with layers of lava and rock, rises dramatically out of the surrounding countryside and is visible, like a traditional Jap anese fan held upside-down and half-opened, from the sea and from most places on the nearby Kanto Plain. Mount Fuji has a diameter of nearly twenty-five miles at the base, and is surrounded by lava fields covered with alpine vegetation; the tree cover on the lower slopes gives way to bare red and gray lava at approximately 8,000 to 9,000 feet above sea level. At the top there is a crater, 260 feet deep and around 1,800 feet in diameter, surrounded by eight peaks, of which the tallest, Kengamme, stands 12,388 feet above sea level. Although the mountain is isolated, in geological terms it forms part of the Fuji Volcanic Zone, a chain stretching from the Mariana Islands far in the Pacific, through the Izu Islands in Tōkyō Bay and the Izu Peninsula to their north, and into the Nagano and Niigata prefectures. Because the volcanic materials that
cover the mountain's slopes and the land around it are ex tremely porous, there is very little surface water on or around Fuji, except in the form of the permanent snow on its upper slopes. The only bodies of water are Lakes Yamanaka, Kawaguchi, Sai, Shōji, and Motosu, the so-called Fuji Five Lakes (Fuji Goko), which lie on the north side of the moun tain, and the streams and paddies of Gotemba, a town to the east of the mountain.
