II THE ASCENT Geologists state that Fuji San is a volcano, a young volcano, 12,365 feet high. Philologists add that _San_ is derived from a Chinese term meaning mountain, and is not the familiar Japanese title which we render by Mr., Lord, or Master; while _Fuji_ is, they declare, a word of Aino origin. And then they all fall silent. These are the facts: the material, provable facts, such as western text-books publish. But to Japan, Fuji San is much more, and most of this is not text-book fact. National tradition says that Fuji arose in a single night, and at the same time Lake Biwa, one hundred and forty miles away, was suddenly formed. There is a legend that, in those far-away days of _mukashi, mukashi_--once upon a time--the Elixir of Life was taken to the top of the mountain, where it still remains. And popular belief declares that all the cinders and ashes brought down by the pilgrims’ feet are carried each night back to the summit of Fuji. To the people, Fuji is sacred; holy to some as the abiding-place of the Goddess _Ko-no-hana-saku-ya-hime_, She who makes the Blossoms of the Trees to Bloom, but sacred to all for its majesty, its unutterable beauty. The peasants of the country-side call Fuji _Oyama_, Honourable Mountain; and to the people Fuji San is Lord and Master. Deep in their hearts, and unassailable by western facts, the worship of his beauty and his power lies throbbing. During that brief six weeks of summer when Fuji’s wind-swept sides alone are climbable, the pilgrims come in thousands, in ten thousands. They dress themselves in white from head to foot. They carry long staves of pure white wood in their hands, each stamped with the temple crest, and in bands and companies they climb the mountain. And always the leader at their head, his staff crowned with a tinkling mass of bells, like tiny cymbals, chants the hymn of Fuji. From base to summit, as the white-clad pilgrims climb, the tinkling cymbals clash, and the voice of the leader rises loud at each refrain: “We are going, we are going to the top.” Above the clash of the bells the chorus echoes: “To the top, to the top, to the top.” “We are going,” chants the leader, and the tiny cymbals clash--“We are going, we are going to the top.” The western facts of modern text-books cannot touch the meaning of this mountain; the love of its long curving line which permeates the nation’s art, the adoration of its beauty, and the reverence of its power. Already in a time which to us upstart western nations is almost _mukashi, mukashi_, in the days before King Alfred burnt the cakes, a Japanese poet had caught and expressed the feeling of the nation for its mountain: for he wrote of Fujiyama as “A treasure given to mortal man The God Protector watching o’er Japan.”