There are several Mount Fujis inside Tokyo

Walk around a Tokyo shrine and you will sometimes notice a small mound covered in black rock in one corner of the grounds. Most people walk straight past. The sign is in Japanese only, and tourist maps rarely mark it.

This is a fujizuka — an artificial hill built in imitation of Mount Fuji.

Why they were built

In the Edo period, devotional associations called Fuji-ko became popular. Members climbed Mount Fuji as an act of worship — but the journey cost time and money most townspeople did not have. Many never went once in their lives.

So a representative would climb the mountain, carry volcanic rock back on his shoulders, and build a miniature Fuji at the local shrine. Climbing it was held to earn the same merit as climbing the real thing.

Dozens survive inside Tokyo's 23 wards. Seven of the best known are grouped as the Edo Nana-Fuji, the seven Fujis of Edo.

The oldest — Sendagaya Fuji

In the grounds of Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine, Shibuya. Built in 1789, it is the oldest fujizuka surviving in Tokyo and is designated a Tangible Folk Cultural Property by the metropolitan government.

It stands about six metres. You reach the summit in a minute or two. Yet that short path compresses the real mountain into miniature.

• A satomiya shrine at the second station, an okumiya at the summit — exactly the arrangement of the real Fuji
• Beside the seventh station, a recreation of Eboshi-iwa, the rock where the Fuji-ko leader Jikigyo Miroku died after a fast
• The summit is covered in black lava actually carried from Mount Fuji
• A pond in front, standing for the "eight seas" at Fuji's foot — the standard form for an Edo fujizuka

Ascent and descent use separate paths. The way is barely thirty centimetres wide and two people cannot pass. Blue marks the way up, red the way down.

This one is always open. The shrine grounds are accessible around the clock.

The tallest — Shinagawa Fuji

In the grounds of Shinagawa Shrine. At roughly fifteen metres it is the largest in Tokyo. It was built not in the Edo period but from 1869 over some four years, and was moved to its present position in 1922 when a road was cut through.

The difficulty is different here. Stations one to five are proper steps, but from the sixth the slope steepens. The footing is uneven and there are stretches where you pull yourself up by a chain.

From the top you can watch the Keikyu trains pass, and beyond them runs the old Tokaido highway — the site of the Shinagawa post town. A stone marker reads "place for worshipping Fuji from afar," meaning the real mountain was once visible from this spot.

Where visitors waste a trip

Some fujizuka can be climbed any day; others cannot. This is the single most useful thing to know, and no guidebook sets it out.

Ekoda Fujizuka江古田の富士塚（浅間神社）

Nerima

Built 1839, eight metres high. Fenced off most days; climbed only on set dates.

Turn up without checking and you will be looking at it from outside a fence. Shitaya-Sakamoto in particular opens for two days a year; miss them and there is nothing to be done.

How to go about it

• Shoes — it is short, but you are stepping on real rock, slippery after rain. Avoid sandals and heels
• One-way paths — many mounds separate ascent from descent because the way is narrow. Follow the markers
• Giving way — if you meet someone, one of you steps back to a wider spot. That is the etiquette here
• Order of worship — the custom is to pray at the satomiya for a safe climb before setting off
• Time needed — one to two minutes at Sendagaya, two to three at Shinagawa; thirty to forty minutes for the whole shrine

A fujizuka is not a site groomed for tourism. It remains a place where local people come to pray. If someone is standing at the summit with their hands together, it is better to lower the camera for a moment.

Dates and access can change. Please check the shrine's own information before travelling.