Mount Ashigara (足柄山), also known as Mount Kintoki (金時山), is the northernmost peak of the Hakone caldera, on the border of

Kanagawa is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...

and Shizuoka prefectures, in the

Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park is a national park in Yamanashi, Shizuoka, and Kanagawa Prefectures, and western Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. It consists of Mount Fuji, Fuji Five Lakes, Hakone, the Izu Peninsula, and the Izu Islands. Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park covers . Rat ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Ashigara is not a remnant of the collapse of the old Hakone volcano itself, but rather a parasitic cone growing from its flank. Mount Ashigara is the legendary birthplace of

Kintarō is a folk hero from Japanese folklore. A child of superhuman strength, he was raised by a yama-uba ("mountain witch") on Mount Ashigara. He became friendly with the animals of the mountain, and later, after catching Shuten-dōji, the terror o ...

Etymology

The

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

of the mountain's name mean "Leg Handle Mountain", but the written form is ''

ateji In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...

'', meaning that the kanji were applied phonetically, and not for any symbolic representation of the mountain's characteristics or history. In old songs it is spelled out phonetically as ''asigari'' (阿之賀利) or ''asigara'' (安思我良).

Access

Hakone is a List of towns in Japan, town in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the town had a population of 10,965, and total area of . Hakone is a notable spa town and a popular tourist destination due to its many onsen, hot springs being within view of ...

side * 90 minutes' walk from Sengoku bus stop Gotemba side * 120 minutes' walk from Otome Toge bus stop Minami Ashigara side * 90 minutes' walk from Ashigara Pass * 120 minutes' walk from Jizodo bus stop

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashigara Volcanoes of Kanagawa Prefecture Parasitic cones

Etymology

Access

See also

References