Fuji: Andrew Bernstein on the human history of the ever-changing mountain

Mount Fuji is at once instantly familiar and seemingly immutable, yet it always remains strange and changeable. Its postcard-perfect peak is known around the world as a wonder of nature and a symbol of Japan. But behind that outline lies a far more complicated history.

Over the centuries, Fuji’s eruptions devastated farmland and terrified villagers. Revered as a sacred presence, its divine inhabitants changed with shifts in belief and power. Once locally known, Fuji later became claimed as a national emblem, its slopes inspiring poetry, painting, and pilgrimage—and serving as the stage for political and economic disputes.

In Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Princeton, 2025), Andrew Bernstein traces this layered story from the mountain’s surprisingly recent geological beginnings to its recognition as a World Heritage Site. The result is a portrait of a place both familiar and unsettled: a mountain still in the making, continually remade by the humans who live with it, use it, revere it, and visit it.

For show notes and more, go to the Historically Thinking Substack page for this episode.