Fugaku-ki

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Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Use of Photographs

I have been fortunate to witness many sacred scenes — shrines around Mt. Fuji and the landscapes shaped by centuries of faith in the mountain. Photographs are free for personal and non-commercial use (including academic purposes). When using them, please credit Shun Fuji (富士駿) and let us know via the form below. For commercial use (print materials, publications, websites, advertising, etc.), please also use the form below.

Kurayashiki Inari Shrine

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An Inari shrine standing in a residential quarter of the old Ōmiya district of Fujinomiya. The place name Kurayashiki — “storehouse compound” — derives from the structure of Ōmiya Castle, seat of the Fuji Ōmiyaji family.

Excavation has shown that Ōmiya Castle was a flatland fortress of linked baileys — main enceinte, second bailey, and the Kurayashiki — ranged east to west, its back set against a sheer lava bluff twenty metres high facing the Kanda River, which rises from the Wakutama Pond. The site was occupied continuously from the early twelfth to the late sixteenth century; dry moats up to nine metres wide and three deep, and the foundations of thick rammed-earth ramparts, have been uncovered. Quantities of fine Chinese ceramics — celadon and white porcelain of the Longquan kilns — attest an economic power and cultural standing to rival the great warrior residences of the age. Archaeology thus confirms the strength of the Fuji family, priests and warriors at once.

Matsuyama Shrine

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Matsuyama Shrine, in Motoshiro-chō in the old Ōmiya district of Fujinomiya, was venerated as the guardian shrine of Hōshaku-ji, the mortuary temple of the Fuji Ōmiyaji family.

Hōshaku-ji was founded in 1692 (Genroku 5) by Fuji Nobumoto, the thirty-fourth Ōmiyaji, who parted from Senshō-ji — the Sōtō Zen temple that had until then served as the family’s mortuary temple — and raised a new Shingon temple on the goten grounds adjoining his own residence, the Fuyōkan. Standing in a relation akin to a branch temple of Hōdōin, the bettō temple of Sengen Taisha, and with monks of the great shrine serving as its incumbents, it bore the character of a jingū-ji — a temple bound intimately to shrine ritual. From then on it managed the funerals and memorial tablets of the successive Ōmiyaji, remaining the centre of the Fuji family’s ancestral rites.

Sakaeibashi Inari Shrine

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An Inari shrine seated on a roadside rise in the old Ōmiya district of Fujinomiya. A stone pillar carries the name Sakaebashi Inari Jinja, and above the stone embankment stand a vermilion torii and the sanctuary.

Ōmiya grew as the temple town before Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha and, at the same time, as Ōmiya-juku, a post station on the Nakamichi Ōkan highway joining Kōfu and Suruga. The turning point in its commercial history came in 1566 (Eiroku 9), when the Sengoku daimyo Imagawa Ujizane issued an edict of rakuichi — free market — for Ōmiya’s six-day market. Trade was thrown open to all comers, not merely privileged merchants; markets stood on days bearing the numbers one and six, and the town flourished as a hub through which rice, salt, fish, Suruga paper, tobacco, and tea all passed.

Senshōji Temple

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Senshō-ji is a Sōtō Zen temple in Ōnakazato, Fujinomiya, bearing the mountain name Kōkokuzan. It was founded in 1384 (Eitoku 4 / Shitoku 1), in the Nanbokuchō period, with Fuji Naritoki — twenty-third Ōmiyaji of Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha — as its founding patron. Originally a Shingon temple, it is said to have been converted to the Sōtō school by the monk Junpaku Yūsei.

What defines this temple is its bond with the Fuji Ōmiyaji family. For some three hundred years, from the generation of Naritoki until the Genroku era, Senshō-ji served as the family’s mortuary temple, conducting the funerals and memorial rites of successive heads of the house. In Ōmiya, where the temples of the Nichiren school held sway, the patronage of the Ōmiyaji family raised Senshō-ji into a stronghold of Sōtō Zen. Within the temple is preserved the memorial tablet of Fuji Naotoki, the twenty-first Ōmiyaji, inscribed as “the first generation” — telling evidence that the family regarded Naotoki as its true founding ancestor.

Shiroyama Sengen Shrine

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Sengen shrine standing on Shiroyama — “castle hill” — in the old Ōmiya district of Fujinomiya. The name refers to the citadel of Ōmiya Castle, seat of the Fuji Ōmiyaji family, on the high ground near the present Ōmiya Elementary School. In the medieval period the residences of the shrine officials — the kumon and the bettō — stood here in rows, a stronghold where politics, war, and religion were one. It was in this castle that the Ōmiyaji Fuji Nobutada shut himself against the invasion of Takeda Shingen. A priestly house that kept a castle: the very ground tells of the structure of power in Ōmiya, with Sengen Taisha at its heart.

Chisaibō Temple Site