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Why you now pay to climb Mount Fuji

Climbing Mount Fuji now costs ¥4,000 and comes with a start-time curfew. Why Japan began charging and limiting climbers, and how to prepare for the climb.

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Mount Fuji at night, with a line of climbers’ headlamps winding up the slope on the Fujinomiya Trail
Photo by Stefan Szankowski on Unsplash

In the photo above, the line of lights climbing Mount Fuji isn’t a road. It’s headlamps: people hiking through the night to watch the sunrise from the summit. That’s exactly the kind of climb Japan has decided to rein in. Since 2025, anyone going up any of the four official trails pays ¥4,000 and has to register in advance. Under the 2026 rules, between 2 p.m. and 3 a.m. only people with a booking at one of the mountain huts are allowed onto the mountain.

The fee is partly about managing overcrowding, which on a 3,776-meter mountain is also a safety issue.

From free to ¥4,000 in two years

The first trail to charge was the Yoshida Trail, on the Yamanashi side and the busiest of the four. In 2024 it started charging ¥2,000 and added a gate that closes once 4,000 people have gone up that day. The three trails on the Shizuoka side (Fujinomiya, Subashiri and Gotemba) stayed free that year. In 2025, all four began charging ¥4,000 and requiring advance registration. The rules stayed the same in 2026. Climbers can also leave an optional ¥1,000 donation for the mountain’s conservation, which comes with a small wooden plaque as a souvenir.

The cap was set against real numbers. In 2023, before the rules, the Yoshida Trail saw 137,236 climbers between July 1 and September 10, an average of 1,906 a day, peaking at 3,974 on July 16, almost exactly the ceiling adopted the following year. The figure also has a technical origin. When Fuji became a World Heritage site, ICOMOS, the body that advises UNESCO, asked for a visitor management plan. Under that plan, more than 4,000 climbers a day means the trail near the summit gets jammed before dawn, raising the risk of people knocking into each other’s poles and packs and falling.

The trouble with overnight climbs

Plenty of people try to climb in one push, overnight, without stopping to sleep in a hut, so they can reach the top at sunrise and head straight back down. Kawaguchiko.net, a tourism site for the Yoshida Trail area, lists climbers who go up without proper rest among those causing problems for everyone else on the mountain.

The risk is real. The official climbing site notes that the climb from trailhead to summit is well over 1,000 vertical meters, and that temperatures fall about 0.6°C for every 100 meters. Wind makes it worse: each meter per second knocks roughly 1°C off how cold it feels. Even in summer, the summit can drop close to 0°C before sunrise, and the longer you wait around, the higher the risk of hypothermia. The curfew targets exactly that: without a hut booking, you have to start climbing in daylight.

A short season

Fuji is only open for climbing in summer, from early July to early September. The 2026 season ended on September 10. Outside that window, first-aid stations and huts are closed, phone coverage drops out and the weather can turn fast. The official site advises against climbing then.

Before you go

  • Pay and register in advance on the official site. Registration isn’t a hut booking; they’re separate.
  • Want the sunrise from the top? Book a hut. Without one, you can’t enter between 2 p.m. and 3 a.m.
  • Pack winter clothing, even in August. High-cut hiking boots, two-piece rain gear, a warm jacket, gloves and a headlamp are on the official list of essentials, and your gear may be checked before you set off.
  • Bring cash and ¥100 coins. Huts and toilets on the trail are paid in cash.
  • Carry your trash back down. A bag for your own rubbish is on the official list too, which won’t surprise anyone who knows why Japan has almost no public trash cans.
  • Check the dates before you plan. Official dates for each season are announced before it starts.

The line of headlamps still makes a beautiful photo. The difference now is that every one of those lights paid to be there and, if it’s the middle of the night, slept in a hut first.

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