ABSTRACT
Mount Fuji, Japan's highest mountain, has since ancient times been a wellspring of art that has provided Japanese literature with much subject matter. Mount Fuji is a solitary mountain rising to a height of 3776 m on the border of present-day Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. Japan's highest mountain, it is a cone-shaped stratovolcano with a gently sloping piedmont zone, and its beautiful and majestic appearance has since ancient times both been an object of worship and given birth to all kinds of art. Mount Fuji could be seen in the distance from Edo, where the Tokugawa shogunate was centred, and this was a source of pride for people living in Edo. The way in which Mount Fuji has been treated in waka poems can be said to have changed with the passage of time. Waka about Mount Fuji have evolved while undergoing changes, but they would seem to be underpinned by an unchanging sense of being moved.
