Hitoana Fuji-kō Heritage Site and Sengen Shrine
The Hitoana Fuji-kō site is the sacred place where Hasegawa Kakugyō, founder of the Fuji-kō, is said to have practised austerities and died. Hitoana itself is a lava cave about 80 metres long, formed at the end of the Inusuzumiyama lava flow of the New Fuji volcano roughly 11,000 to 8,000 years ago. The cave is also called Otainai, or “the womb”, and Asama no Ōkami and Dainichi Nyorai have been worshipped at its innermost point. Cold water drips from the ceiling, and the water that pools at the bottom was regarded as sacred.
Hitoana first appears in writing in 1203 (Kennin 3), when the Azuma Kagami recorded it as “the dwelling of Sengen Daibosatsu”. In the Muromachi period, this account became the basis for a tale, Fuji no Hitoana Sōshi. Following orders from the second shogun, Minamoto no Yoriie, his retainer Nitta Tadatsune enters the cave with his men and meets Sengen Daibosatsu in the form of a great serpent. The bodhisattva leads Tadatsune through the six realms of hell, hungry ghosts, animals, fighting demons, humans, and heavenly beings, instructing him to write down everything he has seen. After his return, however, Tadatsune tells Yoriie what he saw, and both men lose their lives. In the tale, Hitoana serves as an entrance that links this world to the six realms.
During the Eiroku era, near the end of the Sengoku period, Hasegawa Kakugyō (Fujiwara Kakugyō) entered the cave following a revelation in a dream. He is said to have reached enlightenment after undergoing severe austerities, such as tachigyō, in which he stood on tiptoe for a thousand days on a squared timber 4.5 sun across, set upright in the cold water of the cave. Kakugyō is said to have died in this cave in 1646 (Shōhō 3) at the age of 106, and practitioners who inherited his teachings continued their training here.
It is thought that the cave was called Otainai because it was seen as a place of rebirth. Practitioners walked deep into the darkness, wet with the sacred water, came face to face with the deities at the innermost point, and then emerged back into the light. It is regarded as a practice of symbolic death and rebirth, passing once through the world after death. In the Hitoana Sōshi, Tadatsune’s journey through the six realms and back follows this same pattern.
When the Fuji-kō flourished in the Edo period, Hitoana was revered as the Pure Land of the West, the place where the founder died, and members came on pilgrimage to pray for renewal and rebirth in paradise. More than two hundred stone monuments stand in the precinct today. Fuji-kō groups from the Kantō region raised them from the Edo to the Meiji period to honour Kakugyō, hold memorial services for their leaders, mark their climbs, and hold divided remains. The names of many groups, such as the Marufuji-kō and the Yamasan-kō, are carved on them. In 1733 (Kyōhō 18), Jikigyō Miroku, who revived the Fuji-kō, fasted to death in meditation at Eboshi-iwa rock at the 7.5th station of the Yoshida trail. Even after that, pilgrims kept coming to Hitoana as the western sacred place of Kakugyō.
Beside Hitoana, there once stood a temple named Kōkyūji (its name is also recorded with different characters), whose central Dainichi Hall enshrined Dainichi Nyorai. The temple was looked after by the Akaike family, an old family of Hitoana. With the separation of Shinto and Buddhism and the anti-Buddhist movement of the Meiji era, the Dainichi Hall was torn down, and the site is now Hitoana Sengen Shrine. In 2013, it was inscribed as a component of the World Heritage property Fujisan: Sacred Place and Source of Artistic Inspiration.
