Mount Matazan

Mount Matazan was an active volcano on the island of Tsukishima in Wa, and the highest peak in the country. Having great spiritual significance, it was a popular destination for pilgrims and tourists by the 1770s on the Wa Calendar.

Geography
Standing in the center of the northern Ikuyu Mountains, just north of the settlement of Ojichizu, Mount Matazan had an elevation of above sea level, making it the tallest mountain in Wa, and the biggest volcano in the country. Thick black smoke rose unceasingly from its summit. Considered majestic, it had a conical shape with a gentle slope, and stood atop a wide plateau that spread out from all faces of the mountain. One flank of the mountain was called the Dragon's Face, and was known to be perilous.

Hot springs flowed from the flanks of the mountain, and six picturesque lakes lay around the plateau.

Despite this, there was scant vegetation around the foot of the mountain, except at the Garden of the Bloom Lady.

Locations
Dotted around the plateau were dozens of shrines to one or another of the Eight Million Gods, as well as countless roads and trails winding their way up the mountainside. Every year, thousands of tourists and pilgrims climbed Mount Matazan, from its base to its peak, as volcanos were respected and admired for their power and beauty by the people of Wa.

At regular distances beside the main roads were bathhouses, which were fed by the hot springs. The water was thought to be especially revitalizing, and Wanese physicians commonly recommended that the sick and elderly visit the bathhouses for their health.

The Garden of the Bloom Lady was verdant with wild flowers and cherry trees. It was here that two sister spirits, the beautiful Bloom Lady and the unappealing Rock Lady competed for the hand of Ninigi, the August Grandchild. After Ninigi selected the Bloom Lady as his bride, the Rock Lady cursed her sister's flowers to live but brief lives. The Bloom Lady continued to guard this place, and a shrine to her sat next to a natural spring that fountained ice-cold water all through the year.

One of the presumed most likely locations of the River of Three Routes, or Sanzu-no-Kawa, to reach the afterlife was near Mount Matazan. However, there were countless other theories, and where the river was found was not for the living to know.

History
In the 1 year of Chisho, Emperor Kochi discovered a beautiful woman sleeping in a nightingale nest, fell in love with her, and took her back to his palace to become his bride. However, his new queen was actually a consort of the Celestial Bureaucracy and had to return to her home and job. After the wedding, she fled up Mount Matazan and ascended into the sky. Kochi, distraught, pursued her to the summit but could of course follow her no further. She had left behind a clear stone for him containing her image. In anguish, flames burst from his heart and ignited the stone. It fell into the volcano's crater and was said to be the cause of the smoke that continuously rose from the mountain's peak.

An active volcano, Mount Matazan erupted in, when for three days straight lava poured from the peak. It devastated great expanses of fertile farmland and buried dozens of surrounding villages in ash. In particular, the settlement of Ojichizu was nearly destroyed and almost half its people died. Its apple orchards were ruined and its statue of Bishamon was entombed up to its neck in rock.

Mount Matazan remained dormant for the next hundred years, to, but scholars warned the volcano could still erupt again.

In the early-to-mid-1700s, a son of Takashi Yayazato, daimyo of Aru Province, was killed in a climbing accident whilst scaling the Dragon's Face of Mount Matazan.

In the mid-1700s, Toyo Nobi took his family on an excursion somewhere near Mount Matazan, but they were attacked by bandits and all bar his son Muki Nobi were murdered. Muki returned to civilization two years later, changed.