Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/205

Rh the same vicinity,—Mounts Futago, Koma-ga-take, and others in the Hakone district being volcanoes long since extinct. Futago, indeed, still has a crater which deserves a visit, so perfect is its shape and so thickly carpeted is it with moss and shrubs.

Philology is the science that can tell us least; for no consensus of opinion has yet been reached as to the origin of the name of Fuji—anciently Fuzi or Fuzhi. Fuji-san, the current popular name, simply means "Mount Fuji," san being Chinese for "mountain." Fuji-no-yama, the form preferred in poetry, means "the mountain of Fuji" in pure Japanese; and the Europeanised form Fusiyama is a corruption of this latter. But what is the etymology of Fuji itself? The Chinese characters give us no clue. Sometimes the name is written 不二 "not two," that is, "unrivalled," "peerless"; sometimes 不死 "not dying," "deathless;"—and with this latter transcription is connected a pretty legend about the elixir of life having been taken to the summit of the mountain in days of yore. Others write it 富士 that is, "rich scholar," a more prosaic rendering, but no whit more trustworthy. Probably Fuji is not Japanese at all. It might be a corruption of Huchi, or Fuchi the Aino name of the Goddess of Fire; for down to times almost historical the country round Fuji formed part of Aino-land, and all Eastern Japan is strewn with names of Aino origin. We, however, prefer the suggestion of Mr. Nagata Hosei, the most learned of living Japanese authorities on Aino, who would derive Fuji from the Aino verb push, "to burst forth,"—an appellation which might have been appropriately given either to the mountain itself as a volcano, or more probably still to the chief river flowing down from it, the dangerous Fujikawa; for the general Aino practice is to leave even conspicuous mountains unnamed, but carefully to name all the rivers. The letter-changes from Aino push to classical Fuzi are according to Japanese rule, whereas the change from Huchi to Fuzi would be abnormal. The very circumstance, too, of the former etymology appealing less to the imagination is really in its favour.