Images and ink (15)

Image: "The foot of Hodaka-dake" by Ōshita Tōjiro (1870-1911)

Ink: On Hodaka-dake, from Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):

This shows that Hodaka has attracted reverence as a holy mountain from ancient times. Its ruggedness, however, meant that people preferred to adore it from a distance rather than make pilgrimages to its summit. Hodaka is so rugged, indeed, that it remained inviolate long after the summits of nearby Yari and Kasa-ga-dake succumbed to pious monks. 

It was not until the summer of the fourteenth year of Bunka (1817) that Takashima Shōtei, a doctor from Hodaka village in Azumi-gun, visited the mountain with a friend and sketched its topography. But judging from the written account that he left, the pair did not reach the summit...