Mount Nantai


Mount Nantai literally "man's body mountain", also called Futara-san is a stratovolcano in the Nikkō National Park in central Honshū, the main island of Japan. It stands at 2,486 m high. A prominent landmark, it can be seen on clear days from as far as the Pacific coast, 100 km away.

Trekking

The mountain is popular with hikers, and the trail to the summit starts through a gate at Futarasan Shrine's Chūgushi. The gate is open between 5 May and 25 October.
Mount Nantai is one of the 100 famous mountains in Japan.

Volcanic activity

In September 2008, the Japan Meteorological Agency was asked to reclassify Mount Nantai as "active" based upon work by Yasuo Ishizaki and colleagues of Toyama University showing evidence of an eruption approximately 7000 years ago.

Mount Nantai as a sacred mountain

Archeologists affirm that during the Yayoi period the most common go-shintai in the earliest Shinto shrines was a nearby mountain peak supplying with its streams water, and therefore life, to the plains below where people lived.
Mount Nantai constitutes Futarasan Shrine's go-shintai, and the shrine is an important example of this ancient type of mountain cult. Significantly, the name Nantai itself means "man's body". The mountain not only provides water to the rice paddies below, but has the shape of the phallic stone rods found in pre-agricultural Jōmon sites.