Mt. Gassan

Gassan is the highest of the Dewa Sanzan, the three mountains of Dewa, in Yamagata Prefecture. Its name means moon mountain, and it is sacred to Tsukuyomi, the god of the moon. He was born with the sun goddess Amaterasu and the storm god Susanoo when Izanagi purified himself, and a shrine to him stands at the summit.

Going round the three mountains in turn is called the journey of rebirth, a passage through death and return. Each mountain has its part in it, and Gassan's is the middle one: it stands for the world of the moon and of Yomi, the land of the dead, and a pilgrim crosses it before coming out at Yudonosan.

Gassan holds snow for most of the year, and the summit can only be reached in high summer. The shrine at the top opens on the first of July and closes in the middle of September; the shrine at the eighth station, part of the way up, stays open a week or so longer.

For the rest of the year the mountain is shut. Because neither Gassan nor Yudonosan can be reached in winter, the rites of all three mountains are performed instead at the hall on the summit of Haguro, where the three deities are enshrined together.