Goddess of Mt. Fuji
Konohanasakuya Hime: Another Side of the Deity
The images above are reproductions of spiritual amulets that oshi priests from Yoshida and Kawaguchi distributed to believers in the Fuji faith. Amulets of this type are known as go-o hoin or simply go-o. The go-o dated 1788 depicts Amida Nyorai with attendants above Mt. Fuji. In the go-o dated 1860, Amida Nyorai has been replaced by a female Shinto deity.
At Mt. Fuji, this shift in emphasis to a female Shinto deity came long before the government-ordered separation of Buddhism and Shinto in 1868. The identification of the deity of Mt. Fuji with the Shinto deity Konohanasakuya Hime dates from the early seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century, even older statues like the one enshrined at Shibokusa Sengen-jinja Shrine were viewed as depictions of Konohanasakuya Hime. The government decree of 1868 helped fix the new state of affairs in place. Soon, the deity of Mt. Fuji—and the deity worshiped at Sengen or Asama shrines across the country—came to be identified almost universally with Konohanasakuya Hime. This belief was then expressed in sculptures and woodblock prints like those shown below. To this day, images like this remain the most familiar depiction of Mt. Fuji’s deity.
