A Photographer - Mount Fuji 1

Spring Lakeside

In past several years, more than 300 thousands people climbed Mount Fuji per year. There may be various reasons for this sudden Fuji boom, but the most notable one is that Moust Fuji got listed on Japan's tentative list for World Heritage Sites. What caught my attention is it's not listed as a 'natural heritage' but as a 'cultural heritage'. As Natume Soseki once wrote with a little irony "(Fuji ha)wareware ga koshiraetamonzyanai. - Fuji is not something we created.", we want to ask a simple question why the object which was not created by human being is listed as cultural heritage. To understand it, we should take a little time to learn and re-discover the long history of Mountain faith and culture of Fuji.

Since this is a broad topic, I write several posts on different topics of Mountain faith and culture of Fuji. Make sure to check out articles come later ;)

In this post I introduce you to the photographer who had been obsessed with Fuji for his whole life. His name is Okada Kohyo.

Okada Kohyo

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This photo "Yamanami - Mountain Wave" was exhibited at British Museum in 2006, as an image of Japan

Kohyo - Koh yoh - Red Sunlight

If you look at the first photo and 1000yen note blow, you may find something interesting. It is not known to many of Japanese that the famous illustration of Fuji on Banknotes of Japan is based on the photo taken by Okada Kohyo (1895 ~1972).

Kohyo, who started photographing Fuji while he was a university student had been a contracted photographer for Tokyo metropolitan government. At the request from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he held a number of exhibitions abroad, letting world know the word Fujiyama.

It is said that Kohyo took 380thousands (gasp!) of original photos of Mount Fuji. But among these none could reach the goal set by himself. He boasted, 'None of my pictures are what I can call Masterpiece', and called Mount Fuji 'My Girl'.

Mount Fuji is printed on current 1000 yen notes and previous 5000 yen notes.