Mount Takao Day Trip from Tachikawa: Hiking Guide, History and Forest

Mount Takao, one train from Tachikawa, may be the world’s most-climbed mountain. A 1,280-year-old temple and a samurai’s tree-cutting ban explain its forest.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Board a westbound Chuo Line train at Tachikawa Station and within minutes you are rattling across the Tama River. Hino, Toyoda, Hachioji, Nishi-Hachioji. Get off at the fifth stop and you are in Takao. No change of trains. A little way past the end of the line most people use to commute, there is a mountain that is said to be climbed by more people than any other on Earth.

The Hachioji Convention and Visitors Association puts the number of climbers on Mount Takao (Takaosan, 高尾山) at “2.6 million, some say 3 million, a year,” and calls it the most climbed mountain in the world. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Takao Visitor Center gives 2.5 million. The summit stands at 599 metres. Every year, that many people climb a mountain that is not even a sixth the height of Mount Fuji.

What caught my attention, though, was not the crowd. It was a question. How does a mountain that receives this many visitors still have a deep forest on it? Around 50 kilometres from central Tokyo, a short train ride from Tachikawa, how is there room for old beech trees and flying squirrels? The further I read, the clearer it became that half the answer was written on a single notice board from the age of the samurai. It says, more or less, that anyone who cuts down the trees on this mountain will have his head cut off.

Mount Takao from Tachikawa, no change of trains: the truth behind the “world’s busiest” mountain

Mount Takao is in Hachioji (八王子), a city in the Tama area, the long western half of Tokyo Metropolis that most visitors never see. Takao Tozan Railway, the company that runs the mountain’s cable car, describes it as standing at the south-eastern edge of the Kanto mountains, about 50 kilometres from the city centre. The summit is 599 metres. According to the Hachioji visitors association, that “599” has become the mountain’s symbol, so much so that the museum at the foot of the mountain is called the TAKAO 599 MUSEUM. There are not many mountains that put their height on their business card.

The association is clear about what lit the fuse. In 2007, Michelin’s sightseeing guide awarded Mount Takao three stars. According to Yakuo-in Temple, it was Michelin’s first travel guide to Japan, and among mountains, Takao got three stars alongside Mount Fuji. The reason, apparently, was that the mountain was “full of rich nature despite being close to a major city.” Japan’s highest mountain and a low hill you can reach on a commuter train ended up with the same number of stars. I suspect the inspectors left their altimeter at home.

The numbers wobble. The Takao Visitor Center and Takao Tozan Railway say “2.5 million a year.” The visitors association says “2.6 million, some say 3 million.” Yakuo-in says simply that the mountain has “shone as number one in Japan for annual climbers.” “World’s busiest” seems to be a reputation that grew out of figures like these, not the result of anyone counting the climbers on every mountain on the planet at once. Even so, it is the most modest figure, 2.5 million, that impresses me. On its page about hiking manners, Takao Tozan Railway does the arithmetic: “If each person throws away one plastic bottle, that makes a mountain of 2.5 million pieces of rubbish a year.” The real mountain is 599 metres. A rubbish mountain would overtake it in no time.

Crowds are not all good news for a mountain. The Takao Visitor Center writes that so many feet have compacted the soil that plants can no longer grow on it, a process called “bare-ground formation,” and that this has become a serious problem. The steps you find on the trails, it explains, are there to prevent it. It adds that there is no hiking course on the mountain without steps. The stairs of Mount Takao were laid not to make life easier for you, but to protect the mountain from you. When my knees start to complain on the way up, I have decided to think of it as a donation to the forest.

So how does this mountain, trampled by 2.5 million pairs of boots, still have its forest? The story goes back about 1,280 years.

Yakuo-in Temple, founded in 744, and the tengu of Izuna Daigongen

Until the modern era, the visitors association writes, the history of Mount Takao was more or less the history of Yakuo-in. The temple’s full name is Takaosan Yakuo-in Yuki-ji (高尾山薬王院有喜寺). According to the temple, it was founded in the year 744, the 16th year of the Tenpyo era, by the monk Gyoki, on the orders of Emperor Shomu, as a temple to pray for the protection of the eastern provinces. Its first principal image was Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of medicine, which is where the name Yakuo-in, “Temple of the King of Medicine,” comes from.

Today it is one of the head temples of the Chizan school of Shingon Buddhism. The temple notes that, together with Naritasan Shinsho-ji and Kawasaki Daishi Heiken-ji, it is known as one of the school’s three great head temples. Two of the most famous temples in the Tokyo region, and a third of the same rank halfway up a mountain you can reach by train from Tachikawa. I was going to add “so why go all the way to Narita or Kawasaki?” but I would prefer not to be scolded by two head temples at once.

In the Eiwa era, in 1375, a monk named Shungen came to the mountain from Mount Daigo in Kyoto. After performing a fire ritual in which eight thousand prayer sticks are burned, he enshrined the deity who is still the temple’s principal object of worship, Izuna Daigongen (飯縄大権現), and revived the temple. Izuna Daigongen was revered as a guardian deity by warlords, Yakuo-in writes, and was enshrined even on the helmets of Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. Those two were the most famous rivals of Japan’s age of civil war. They wore the same god on their heads. The god must have had to be very diplomatic.

The many statues of tengu, the long-nosed or bird-beaked mountain goblins of Japanese folklore, that you see on Mount Takao are tied to this deity. According to Yakuo-in, the tengu are Izuna Daigongen’s attendants, believed to have the power to ward off misfortune, open the way to good luck and invite blessings. Mount Takao is also a mountain of Shugendo, a mountain-worship tradition mixing Buddhism and older beliefs, and the yamabushi, the ascetics who trained in the mountains, were often identified with tengu. Two waterfalls on the mountain, Biwa-daki and Hebi-taki, are still used as places of waterfall training, and the temple opens them to ordinary visitors too.

On the approach to the temple, the Joshin-mon gate carries a framed inscription reading “Reiki Manzan” (霊気満山), roughly “a mountain filled with sacred spirit.” According to the Japan Heritage page of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, this was how people of the past described Mount Takao, a mountain blessed with rich nature and full of the “life force” of plants and animals. Near the same gate stands a stone inscribed “Sessho Kindan,” “the taking of life is forbidden.” Yakuo-in lists religious protection, including the strict prohibition of killing any living thing, as one of the reasons Mount Takao’s nature is so rich.

A temple protected a forest. So far, a familiar story. What makes Mount Takao unusual is what happened next: one ruler after another, in age after age, took on the job of guarding the same woods.

Hojo Ujiteru’s decree: cut even the undergrowth and lose your head

In the age of civil war, Mount Takao stood at a strategic point near the border between Musashi province (roughly today’s Tokyo and Saitama) and Kai province (today’s Yamanashi). According to Yakuo-in’s account of its history, the Hojo clan of Odawara were especially devout patrons.

First, Hojo Ujiyasu did something rather odd. According to the war chronicle Hojo-ki, when Kai and Musashi went to war and checkpoints were set up on the border, the road to Mount Fuji was blocked for pilgrims. Some resourceful people brought the deity of Mount Fuji, Sengen Daibosatsu, to Mount Takao, and announced that “Fuji Sengen has flown to Mount Takao.” Pilgrims from all over the Kanto region who could not get to Fuji poured into Takao instead, and the mountain prospered overnight. Yakuo-in writes that it was Ujiyasu, in the Tenbun era, who linked Fuji worship with Mount Takao. Mount Fuji flew over. Even in the 16th century, Mount Takao was the great mountain you could actually get to.

In 1560 Ujiyasu donated land to pay for repairs to the temple’s Yakushi hall, and in 1570 he presented a five-storey bronze pagoda as thanks for a victory over Takeda Shingen. His son, Hojo Ujiteru (北条氏照), who would later build Hachioji Castle, also donated land at Kunugida in 1575. According to Yakuo-in, that donation was later confirmed by the Tokugawa shogunate as a temple estate and remained the foundation of Mount Takao until the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

Then, in the second month of 1590, as Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s great campaign against the Hojo stronghold of Odawara drew near, a notice board, a seisatsu or official decree, was issued to Yakuo-in from Ujiteru’s side. The temple publishes the whole text. In paraphrase, it says this. We had long ordered the people living below the castle in Hachioji not to cut the bamboo and trees on this mountain, and yet they have cut the mountain bare. From today, anyone who cuts not only bamboo and trees but even the undergrowth will have his head cut off, along with his whole household. Seize offenders on sight and take them to Takiyama. Go out to Musashino for your firewood.

Cut the undergrowth, lose your head. The tension of the eve of war comes straight off the page, but I keep finding my eyes drawn to the last line. Go out to Musashino for your firewood. Musashino is the broad upland plateau that spreads east from the Takao hills. Tachikawa sits on top of it. So, a little over 430 years ago, the townspeople of Hachioji were being told to leave Mount Takao’s trees alone and go and gather their firewood out in the fields in the direction of Tachikawa. The decree does not say exactly which part of Musashino they went to.

Yakuo-in reads the decree as forest protection for the defence of Hachioji Castle, and writes that it became the attitude every later ruler took towards the mountain’s woods. Indeed, after the Hojo fell, Okubo Nagayasu, the Tokugawa official in charge of the area, issued a letter to the effect that “Mount Takao has long been a protected place, so anyone, whoever he may be, who carelessly cuts its bamboo or trees shall be taken to Hachioji.” From “we will cut off your head” to “we will take you to Hachioji.” The punishment softened somewhat. The principle of protecting the forest did not.

And the forest went on being protected. In 1871, of the temple’s estate of more than 720 cho (a cho is roughly a hectare), all but about 10 cho of temple grounds was taken over by the state and became imperial forest. After the Second World War it became national forest, and in 1967, to mark a hundred years since the Meiji Restoration, it was designated Meiji no Mori Takao Quasi-National Park. Yakuo-in lists the line of guardians: the Hojo, the Tokugawa shogunate, the imperial household, the national forest service, the quasi-national park. The owner of the forest changed again and again. Only the order not to cut it never changed.

According to Hachioji City’s Japan Heritage materials, Mount Takao has a giant cedar said to be 700 years old, and the cedars of Mount Takao are designated natural monuments by both Tokyo and Hachioji City. The avenue of cedars makes the approach to the temple all the more striking. Since the Edo period, people have also offered cedar saplings to the temple, a custom called sugi-nae hono, as thanks when their prayers are answered. The forest was raised not only by orders, but by prayers.

Mount Takao in numbers

• 599 — the height of the summit in metres. It became the name of the museum at the foot of the mountain. About a sixth the height of Mount Fuji, with the same number of Michelin stars.
• 744 — the year Yakuo-in was founded. People have been praying on the same mountain for more than 1,280 years.
• 2.5 million — climbers a year, according to the Takao Visitor Center and Takao Tozan Railway. Convert them into plastic bottles and you get a mountain.
• 31°18′ — the steepest gradient on the cable car line. According to Takao Tozan Railway, the steepest of any funicular in Japan.
• 1,300 — species of higher plants growing on and around Mount Takao (in 153 families). Harder to learn than the names of your fellow hikers.
• 65 — wild plants first described from Mount Takao and published to the scientific community. There are flowers walking around with the mountain’s name on them.

A detour quiz

According to the decree issued to Yakuo-in in the name of Hojo Ujiteru in the age of civil war, how were people who cut bamboo and trees on the mountain to be punished?

1. A fine paid in rice　(B) Beheading　(C) A year of cleaning the mountain

The answer is on the last page of this article.

Japan’s steepest funicular: a Showa-era history of the Takao cable car

From protecting the forest, let us turn to climbing it. A cable car runs from Kiyotaki Station at the foot of the mountain to Takaosan Station halfway up. Kiyotaki Station is about a five-minute walk from Takaosanguchi Station on the Keio Line.

According to the diagram published by Takao Tozan Railway, the line is 1,000 metres long with a difference in height of 271 metres. At its steepest it climbs at 31 degrees 18 minutes, and the company writes that this is “the steepest gradient of any funicular line in Japan; passengers looking down from the windows let out cries of astonishment.” A railway company states, of its own track, that its passengers cry out in astonishment. You rarely read prose this confident in a timetable. Each car carries up to 135 people, at 3.3 metres per second, under automatic control.

One sentence on safety is strangely reassuring. The rope has a safety factor of more than ten. Should it ever snap, a powerful automatic brake clamps the rail and stops the car after it has slid only about two metres. Read that while climbing Japan’s steepest funicular and it is a very welcome sentence indeed.

The cable car opened in 1927. According to the company’s chronology, it suspended operations in 1944 under a wartime order consolidating businesses, and was among the first to come back after the war, in 1949. Large, fully automatic cars were introduced in 1968, and they were replaced by new ones in 2008. The two cars that climb the mountain stopped once for the war, started again, and still carry people up to around 472 metres above sea level, halfway up.

Before the cable car, everyone walked up to Yakuo-in. According to Hachioji City’s local history series, in the early Showa era (the Showa era ran from 1926 to 1989), people came from all over Japan to visit Tama Mausoleum, the imperial tomb built nearby, and the number of sightseers visiting Mount Takao rose with them. When the Keio Takao Line opened in 1967, the visitors association writes, the number of hikers and pilgrims shot up. Mount Takao’s popularity did not begin suddenly in 2007. Every time the railways stretched a little further, a few more people came to the mountain.

Showa-era Takao, when you climbed from “Asakawa”

People who remember Mount Takao in the Showa era and people who don’t may not even agree on the name of the station. Today’s Takao Station was called Asakawa Station until 1961. The town of Asakawa, where the station stood, was absorbed into Hachioji City in 1959, and that is when Mount Takao’s address became Hachioji. Until the middle of the Showa era, Takao was not “Hachioji’s mountain” but “Asakawa’s mountain.”

The trip from Tachikawa changed shape in the Showa era too. According to Tachikawa City’s chronology, electrification of the Chuo Line reached Tachikawa in 1929. By the end of the following year, the stretch between Tachikawa and Asakawa is said to have been electrified as well. The mountain that once stood beyond the smoke of steam locomotives became a mountain you could commute to by electric train.

After the war, a new ride appeared on the mountain. According to Takao Tozan Railway, in October 1964, the year of the Tokyo Olympics, a single-seat chairlift opened alongside the cable car. In September 1971 it became a two-seat lift with a conveyor-belt system for getting on and off, and as a “unique two-seat lift” it became one of the mountain’s great attractions, the company writes. It is 872 metres long and takes about 12 minutes to the top station, with rows of Kitayama-daisugi cedars beneath your feet.

Then: someone gets off at Asakawa Station and sways up the mountain on a single-seat chairlift, brand new in the Olympic year. Now: a parent and child change to the Keio Line at Takao Station and ride up the mountain side by side on the two-seater. The station name has changed and so has the number of seats. The one thing that has not changed since the Meiji era is that the railway to the mountain runs out from Tachikawa.

I confess, though, that every time I take the cable car up I feel slightly guilty. On a mountain that most of its 2.5 million visitors climb on foot, I reach the halfway point in about six minutes. I always resolve to walk down. And my knees always betray me.

Still, the forest waiting at the top of the cable car is more than enough to make you forget six minutes of guilt. There are trees standing there that ought to be growing on the mountains of northern Japan.