Qualla: Mount Nokogiri

Mount Nokogiri: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Σ64, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name says it all. Nokogiri -- "saw mountain" -- earns its title honestly: centuries of quarrying during the Edo period carved the western face of this 329-meter peak into a jagged sawtooth silhouette visible from across Tokyo Bay. But what the quarrymen left behind became something far stranger and more beautiful than bare rock. On the sheer walls they exposed, artisans carved a 31-meter stone Buddha. Along the switchback trails threading the cliff faces, a master sculptor named Jingoro Eirei Ono and his 27 apprentices spent 21 years placing 1,500 individual stone arhats -- Buddhist disciples, each face unique -- transforming an industrial scar into one of the most extraordinary temple complexes in Japan.

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Image: Σ64 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Nokogiri: Where the Saw Bites the Bay

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ערן, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mount Nokogiri straddles the border between the city of Futtsu and the town of Kyonan on the Boso Peninsula, the finger of land that forms the eastern arm of Tokyo Bay. The mountain runs east to west, its western flank dropping precipitously into the water. Two road tunnels and a...

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Image: ערן | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mount Nokogiri: Stone for a Shogun's Capital

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emily Zarndt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The jagged profile is no accident of geology. During the Edo period, quarrymen carved Nokogiri's high-quality stone and shipped it across the bay to build the structures of Edo -- modern-day Tokyo. The work left dramatic vertical cliff faces and horizontal terraces gouged into th...

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Image: Emily Zarndt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mount Nokogiri: The Medicine Buddha and 1,500 Faces

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photograph by Emily Zarndt., CC BY-SA 3.0. On the mountain's southern slopes sits Nihon-ji, a Buddhist temple founded in 725 AD by the priest Gyoki on the orders of Emperor Shomu -- making it one of the oldest temples in the Kanto region. The temple's centerpiece is its colossal Daibutsu, a seated carving of Yakushi Nyora...

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Image: Photograph by Emily Zarndt. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Nokogiri: The Ropeway and the Ridge

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Σ64, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Nokogiriyama Ropeway lifts visitors from Hamakanaya Station on the JR Uchibo Line to a lookout platform near the top of the temple precinct, offering a panoramic sweep of Tokyo Bay, the Boso Hills, and on exceptionally clear days, the distant cone of Mount Fuji. For those who...

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Image: Σ64 | CC BY-SA 3.0