The product of two decades of research, Andrew Bernstein’s new book on Mount Fuji is an outstanding achievement. Tracing its early geological formation to its recent transformation into a world heritage site, Fuji interweaves environmental and human history and, in doing so, demonstrates how profoundly the two are connected. And as good subtitles do, A Mountain in the Making foreshadows a key argument in the book—despite an image of stability and timelessness, Mount Fuji’s history is one of continual making and remaking, both physically and culturally.

The book ambitiously spans Fuji’s origins all the way down to the present day. Following a brief introduction, chapter one overviews the multi-phased formation of the volcano as well as early human contact with the region, before closing with some of the earliest writings about the mountain in the form of eighth-century poetry. Chapter two demonstrates how Fuji’s sheer scale and visibility, not to mention terrifying eruptions in the early Heian period (785–1185), inspired contradictory sentiments over the course of Japan’s ancient and medieval history (roughly eighth – sixteenth centuries) that oscillated between fear and love as well as beliefs in vengeful deities on one side to healing powers on the other. Chapter three takes a deep dive into the causes and impact (environmental and social) of the massive Hōei eruption (named after the era) on the south-eastern slope of the mountain in 1707–1708. Chapter four turns to surging pilgrimage and devotion towards Fuji that arguably peaked between the mid eighteenth and mid nineteenth centuries. Chapter five looks at the ever-expanding material culture (poetry, symbolic imagery, ukiyo-e paintings, maps, and guidebooks) that put Fuji on the national—and increasingly international—map around this time. Chapter six moves forward to nineteenth-century ruptures as the mountain’s iconographic distinction placed it in the crosshairs of fiery cultural debates, religious violence, and encroaching imperialism. Chapter seven explores the gravitational pull towards Fuji that many felt when it came to scientific experimentation, mountaineering, tourism, national ideology, imperialism, and eventually US occupation in the first half of the twentieth century. Chapter eight steps back to consider how key livelihoods and industries—encompassing silk, tea, paper, and military exercises (Japanese and American)—have shaped the landscape, for better and worse, over the past several centuries. Finally, chapter nine closes with an illuminating look at the mountain’s recent designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (in 2013) and the values, debates, and environmental implications imposed on it through that process.

In these chapters, Bernstein’s methodological choices guide two interconnected arguments. First, by covering both environmental and human history, he reveals how intertwined people and land have been throughout the history of human contact with the site. This may seem like an obvious point, but by repeatedly showing how humans altered the physical landscape of Fuji and its surroundings, and vice versa, how the mountain continually shaped human life around it, the book offers a highly compelling alternative to the human/nature binary through which we commonly perceive the world.

Second, by zooming out temporally, Bernstein identifies repeating patterns of geological and human forces over the longue durée. In this way, the book disrupts a dominant, if not myopic, cultural narrative in the modern era that smooths over historical moments of discord and turbulence in favour of an image of harmonious coexistence between people and nature and among people. Promoted by organisations like UNESCO and ICOMOS, this vision is not exceptional to Fuji, and the book presents an interesting test case for comparison with other World Heritage Sites. Bernstein, furthermore, makes a compelling case for why it’s important to pay equal attention to rupture, change, and destruction on social and environmental levels. As he ends the book, ‘It is only by accounting for the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, that we can do historical justice to the multiple lives of Fuji and, one could argue, even more fully celebrate this famous but in many ways hidden peak’ (p. 245).

What are those characteristics (good–bad–beautiful–ugly) in Fuji’s long history? Here are a couple of fascinating examples (I’ll leave readers to discover more on their own). Bernstein’s riveting account of the Hōei eruption in chapter three explores everything from its geological causes to a detailed damage report on lava flow, climate-altering cloud debris, and the settled debris (measured in metres!) across the region. Out of the ashes of this event emerged cosmological diagnoses (through yin–yang logic), crop decimation and resulting widespread famine, social unrest and protest, and a range of governmental responses, all of which ‘tested the ecological and political limits of Tokugawa Japan’ (p. 77). In another example, from chapter seven, we learn about a daring scientific mission carried out by a married couple (the Nonakas) in a self-constructed stone shelter on Fuji’s summit in the final months of 1895. Suffering from malnutrition, poor hygiene, and frigid conditions, the couple narrowly escaped death, thanks to a desperate (and uninvited) rescue. Bernstein pieces together the couple’s harrowing residence on top of the wintry volcano by relying on extensive newspaper reportage, which included the serialised diary of the wife, Chiyoko.

As someone who also studies mountains in Japan, I wondered at times if the book overly centres Fuji amidst Japan’s vast landscape of mountains. There are instances where Bernstein recounts a moment in the mountain’s history without situating it among similar trends at other mountains (e.g. origin legends of mountain temples composed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; early modern pilgrimage to sacred mountains at large; or alpine scientific investigations that spanned modern Japan and its empire). Without that context, the image of Fuji’s singularity has the potential to become reinforced. That said, the ambitious scope of the book—environmental and cultural, prehistory to present—understandably privileges Fuji. In the early chapters, moreover, Bernstein dispels the perception of Fuji’s exceptionality by noting its cultural insignificance throughout much of ancient and medieval Japanese history. In contrast, the closer we move towards the present, the more centrally Fuji comes to occupy the cultural imagination, media spheres, and national symbolism, all of which warrants its sustained treatment. As such, this observation comes less as a criticism of the book than as a nod to the rich histories of other significant mountains across Japan and East Asia.

As a whole, Fuji will garner interest across academic disciplines (environmental history, cultural history, Japan studies, and mountain studies), university classrooms, and general readers seeking an in-depth look at one of the world’s most famous natural landmarks. Numerous maps and images (including eight pages of colour plates) complement a text that is meticulously researched (without being dry or jargony) and well-framed within chapters and chapter sections.Footnote ¹ Bernstein goes out of his way to position events at Fuji into the broader historical context of regional and/or national history, making the book highly accessible to students and non-specialists of Japan. Throughout its pages, one comes to appreciate how the genre of ‘biography’, as he identifies it, works as well for places as it does for people. While the actual ascent of Fuji can be a grind, as experienced by multitudes of historical and contemporary actors in the book (not to mention, the author and this reviewer), Fuji is a monumental literary expedition that is anything but.