Mount Mitake stands at the eastern gateway of the park, and humans have been climbing it in reverence since antiquity. The Shinto shrine on its summit was established during the reign of Emperor Sujin, traditionally dated to 90 B.C., making it one of the oldest continuously sacred sites in Japan. The building houses a Zaogonge Statue carved in 736 A.D. Today, a cable car carries visitors up the mountain, but the sense of ascending toward something older than history persists. The park's spiritual geography runs deep. These mountains were not just worshipped -- they were considered dwelling places of the divine, and the trails that connect them were pilgrimage routes long before they were hiking paths. The forest canopy closes overhead as you climb, and the air sharpens with altitude, carrying the mineral scent of exposed rock and the sweetness of Japanese beech.

The park's unusual political geography shapes its character. On the Tokyo side, Mount Mitake, Mount Odake, and Mount Mito form the accessible front range. Mount Mito's three peaks -- Western (1,527 m), Central (1,531 m), and Eastern (1,528 m) -- anchor a ridgeline running northeast from Mount Takao in Hachioji. The mountain's forests of Fagus japonica, the Japanese beech, earned it a place among Japan's 100 best mountains in 1997. It is also the source of the Aki River, a major tributary of the Tama River. The Saitama side offers different terrain: the Tochimoto Sekisho Historical Site marks a junction where the old Chichibu Trail through Karisaka Pass met the Shinshu Route through Jumonji Pass. In its heyday, this remote mountain settlement was a crossroads for travelers moving between provinces. Nearby, Nakatsu Canyon stretches roughly 10 kilometers along the Nakatsu River, a tributary of the Arakawa, and draws visitors every November when the maple canopy ignites into its fall display.

What makes Chichibu Tama Kai quietly essential to the life of central Japan is water. The park contains the headwaters of four major rivers: the Arakawa, which flows through Saitama and into Tokyo Bay; the Shinano, Japan's longest river, which runs north through Nagano to the Sea of Japan; the Tama, which supplies drinking water to millions of Tokyoites; and the Fuefuki, a tributary of the Fuji River system. Every glass of tap water poured in western Tokyo began as precipitation on these ridgelines. The connection between the park's granite peaks and the teeming cities downstream is invisible but absolute -- a hydrological lifeline running beneath the surface of daily life. On the Nagano Prefecture side, Mount Kobushi rises to 2,475 meters at the border with Saitama, and one theory holds that its name derives from the first characters of three old provinces that converge at its summit. The mountain is also recognized as the source of the Chikuma River, the Nagano portion of the Shinano.

The park's trail network is a palimpsest of centuries. Some paths follow routes that Edo-period travelers used to cross between provinces. Others were blazed by Meiji-era foresters or postwar mountaineering clubs. On the Nagano side, the popular route stretches from Mokiba, famous for its azalea blooms in June, to the summit of Mount Kobushi. In the Saitama section, old railway tracks from the Shinrin Railway are still visible across the river from Nakatsu Canyon -- remnants of the logging industry that once pulled timber from these slopes. Three visitor centers serve the park: Mitake, Okutama, and Yama-no-furusato, each oriented toward a different section of the terrain. The park was established in 1950, but the land it protects has been considered special for millennia. Walking these trails, you move through layers of human meaning -- pilgrimage, commerce, forestry, recreation -- all pressed into the same narrow mountain paths, each generation adding its own purpose to the stone underfoot.