A solitary peak at 3,067m on the Nagano-Gifu prefectural border. Counted with Mount Fuji and Mount Hakusan as one of Japan's Three Sacred Mountains, an active volcano long revered as a sacred site of Ontake faith. Scattered at the foot of the mountain are subsidiary shrines of various religious organizations, and faith groups called "Ontake-ko" are still organized nationwide. The September 2014 er…

Reverence for Mount Ontake is said to date back to the Nara period (early 8th century), with tradition holding that ascetic practitioners opened the mountain as a sacred site around 700 CE. Through the Heian and Kamakura periods it was venerated as a center of mountain asceticism, and during the med…