TOKYO - On the first day of the climbing season for Mt. Fuji, foreign tourists joined the crowd on the trail. They gazed at the sun peeking through the clouds, expressing their excitement.
Designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in 2013, Japan's tallest peak attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year during its official climbing season. Two of the four main hiking trails opened at the start of July, and the other two open nine days later. All of the trails are available through Sept. 10.
A day after the opening, the two prefectures where the mountain straddles alongside two others in central Japan set up a study group to evacuate foreign tourists to safe locations in the event of a Mt. Fuji eruption or a major earthquake.
The risk of eruption may not be imminent, but the move underscores a critical vulnerability: when disaster strikes near one of Japan's most visited landmarks, foreign tourists who do not speak Japanese may have no way of knowing where to go or what to do.
Officials from the central government and private-sector companies also attended the group's inaugural meeting in Tokyo, where participants shared the view that they should work together to provide smooth support for visitors to Japan.
An active volcano, Mt. Fuji is located on the border of Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures. Roads allow vehicles to reach its fifth station, and it typically takes a day or a night's stay to scale the 3,776-meter peak.
It has long been an object of mountain worship, appearing in Japan's oldest poetry collection Manyoshu and in numerous works including the "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji" by ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).
When a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck Yamanashi Prefecture on the night of June 26, the Japan Meteorological Agency said there were no notable changes in Mt. Fuji's volcanic activity.
The focus was about 30 kilometers away, and Kazushige Obara, chair of the government's Earthquake Research Committee, also said, "We have not received any reports that volcanic activity is increasing directly beneath Mt. Fuji."
The committee noted, however, that "earthquakes of magnitude 4 or higher occur from time to time" in the surrounding area, and said that in 2012 and 2021, larger quakes occurred shortly after the initial events -- a reminder that the situation can change quickly.
Although no eruptions have been observed at Mt. Fuji for over 300 years, low-frequency earthquakes have occurred frequently since around the year 2000. In 2012, the national and local governments established the Mt. Fuji Volcano Disaster Prevention Council with the help of experts.
According to the council, about 96 percent of roughly 180 eruptions confirmed over the past 5,600 years were small or medium in scale. The last eruption with reliable records was in 1707, when volcanic ash accumulated to about 4 centimeters near what is now central Tokyo.
Against this backdrop, the study group was launched at Yamanashi's urging, and Gov. Kotaro Nagasaki as its chair said in opening remarks, "We want to build a practical system that will help ensure the safety of foreign tourists and support their return home."
In the event of a disaster, the group is considering transporting tourists by bus and other means to unaffected prefectures for temporary stays, while also envisioning coordination with embassies for repatriation.
Companies involved in evacuation-related services such as buses, railways and communications joined the meeting, and the group plans to compile response procedures incorporating each party's role by March next year -- a race against time as the number of foreign visitors to Japan continues to climb.
