Japan’s Highest Mountain

Caitlin Dempsey

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At 3,776 meters (12,389 feet) tall, Mount Fuji is Japan’s highest mountain.  

The mountain is located near the Pacific coast of central Honshu, south-west of Tokyo.  The mountain is visible on clear days from the Japanese cities of Yokohama and Tokyo, which are both 120 kilometers away.

Mount Fuji is a Dormant Stratovolcano

A dormant stratovolcano, Mount Fuji is a composite of three successive volcanos.  This makes Mount Fuji also the largest volcano in Japan.  Mount Fuji last erupted in 1707.

The mountain is snow-capped five months out of the year.  On May 9, 2019, the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite captured this image of Mount Fuji.

Satellite image of Mount Fuji, Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Mountain Fuji, Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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Caitlin Dempsey

Caitlin Dempsey is a geographer, writer, and founder and editor of Geography Realm. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Geography from UCLA and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from San José State University.

For more than two decades, she has written about geography, maps, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, satellite imagery, and environmental science. Her work focuses on making geography accessible to a broad audience through articles, tutorials, and educational resources.

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