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Mount Nantai (男体山, Nantai-san, lit.'male-body mountain',[2] also called Mount Futara (二荒山, Futāra-san)[2]) is a stratovolcano in the Nikkō National Park in Tochigi Prefecture, in central Honshū, the main island of Japan. The mountain is 2,486 metres (8,156 ft) high.[1] A prominent landmark, it can be seen on clear days from as far as Saitama, a city 100 km (62 mi) away.
Alongside Mount Nikkō-Shirane, Mount Nantai is one of the newest volcanic edifices in the National Park. Scientific studies of the volcano's geological structure began in 1957 and have established that it was formed roughly 23,000 years ago and that its last eruption was 7000 years ago.[3] The volcano was classified as active by the Japan Meteorological Agency in June 2017.[4]
Literally, the two kanji characters that make up the name, 男 and 体, mean "man" and "body" respectively, and so together the combined word 男体 means "male body".[2] Mount Nantai is said to have been the father in a family of mountain deities in Shinto, of which the neighboring Mount Nyohō is the mother and Mount Tarō the eldest son.[6]
Trekking
Mount Nantai, as seen from the Japanese city of Saitama.
The mountain is popular with hikers, and the trail to the summit starts through a gate at Futarasan Shrine's Chūgushi (中宮祠, middle shrine). The gate is open between 5 May and 25 October.[7]
In September 2008, the Japan Meteorological Agency was asked to reclassify Mount Nantai as "active" based upon work by Yasuo Ishizaki and colleagues of Toyama University showing evidence of an eruption approximately 7000 years ago.[8]
Relief Map
Mount Nantai as a sacred mountain
View of Mount Nantai from Futara Bridge
Archaeologists affirm that during the Yayoi period the most common go-shintai (御神体) (a yorishiro housing a kami) in the earliest Shinto shrines was a nearby mountain peak supplying with its streams water, and therefore life, to the plains below where people lived.[5]
Mount Nantai constitutes Futarasan Shrine's go-shintai, and the shrine is an important example of this ancient type of mountain cult.[5] Significantly, the name Nantai (男体) itself means "man's body".[5] The mountain not only provides water to the rice paddies below, but has the shape of the phallic stone rods found in pre-agricultural Jōmon sites.[5]
^Yamamoto, Takahiro (4 February 2015). "日本の主要第四紀火山の積算マグマ噴出量階段図 (日光火山群)" [Cumulative volume step-diagrams for eruptive magmas from major Quaternary volcanoes in Japan (Nikko Volcanoes)] (PDF). Geological Survey of Japan. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
