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A 937 eruption at Mount Fuji left a cave shaped like a womb [1]

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Date: 2026-08-06  

In the year 937, Mount Fuji erupted and sent the Ken-Marubi lava flow down its northern slopes and over a stand of fallen trees. The lava hardened around the trunks while the wood inside burned away, leaving long hollow tubes in the ground. One of them is the Funatsu-Tainai lava tree mold, a narrow cave near Lake Kawaguchi that Atlas Obscura describes as revered in Japan as the womb of Mount Fuji.

The comparison comes from the walls. The burning trees left the inside of the tube ribbed and rippling, which struck visitors as the inside of a body. Followers of the Fuji-ko folk religion treated a walk in and back out as a rebirth that left them as clean as newborns before they climbed the mountain. Expectant mothers came to pray that their own births would go well. The goddess Konohanasakuya-hime, the patron of Fuji, is said to have given birth in the cave, and her shrine now marks the entrance.

Her shrines have burned down more than once in eruptions from the mountain above them. Fuji is still an active volcano, though its last confirmed eruption came more than 300 years ago. The cave is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and there is a small admission fee, paid at the Kawaguchiko Field Center.

Previously:

• The mountain where climbers stop short of the summit on purpose

• Artist paints Lovecraft's Great Old Ones into all 46 of Hokusai's woodblock prints

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/08/06/funatsu-tainai-lava-tree-mold.html

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