Mount Iwaki

Mount Iwaki stands alone on the western side of the Tsugaru plain, visible from Hirosaki, Aomori and the Sea of Japan coast. From the south it appears as a regular cone, but seen from other directions its three summits – Iwaki-san, Ganki-san and Chōyō-san – give it a more complex profile. The lower slopes are covered by apple orchards, and Hirosaki's castle is framed by the mountain in the most famous views of the city.

For the people of Tsugaru the mountain is Oyama, "the mountain": a place where ancestral spirits reside and the object of worship of Iwakiyama Jinja, the chief shrine of the former province. The Oyama-sankei pilgrimage is one of the most important folk religious events in northern Japan.

Iwaki is a stratovolcano built over the last several hundred thousand years, with a central lava dome forming the summit. Collapse of the flank produced debris flows that shaped the terrain around Iwaki town, and small eruptions and steam explosions were recorded in the Edo period and in the 19th century.

The mountain lies close to the Shirakami mountains, whose beech wilderness is a World Heritage site, and shares their snowy, humid Sea of Japan climate.

Beech forest covers the middle slopes, giving way to Erman's birch and dwarf pine near the summit. Iwaki is home to the endemic Michinoku-kozakura primrose.

Iwakiyama Jinja at Hyakuzawa, on the south-east foot, was the tutelary shrine of the Tsugaru clan, whose lords rebuilt its splendid buildings in the Edo period. The Oyama-sankei (also Oyama-mairi), held around the first day of the eighth lunar month, brings village groups to the summit to pray for good harvests; the pilgrimage is designated an important intangible folk cultural property. Iwaki also appears in the legend of Anju and Zushiō, whose heroine Anju is worshipped on the mountain.