Chieko Takamura was born in the town of Adachi, in what is now the city of Nihonmatsu, at the foot of Mount Adatara. She grew up under that sky before moving to Tokyo, where she became a painter and married Kotaro Takamura, one of Japan's foremost modern sculptors and poets. Their relationship was a partnership of equals -- radical for early twentieth-century Japan. But in 1931, Chieko began showing signs of schizophrenia, and by 1935 Kotaro was forced to commit her. She died of tuberculosis three years later. The poems he wrote in her memory, collected as "Chieko-sho" (Chieko's Sky), are suffused with grief and tenderness. The most famous, "A Portrait of Chieko," contains her declaration that Tokyo's sky was not real -- that the true sky could only be found above Mount Adatara. The poem made the mountain a symbol of purity, longing, and home.

Mount Adatara is no gentle backdrop. It is an active stratovolcano, the highest peak in a range that stretches nine kilometers north to south through central Fukushima Prefecture, roughly fifteen kilometers southwest of the city of Fukushima and east of neighboring Mount Bandai. The summit crater, called Numanotaira, is a stark lunar landscape ringed by fumaroles that hiss sulfurous steam into the mountain air. In the nineteenth century, miners extracted sulfur from that crater. On a July day in 1900, the volcano reminded them who was in charge: an eruption within the crater killed 72 mine workers, injured 10 more, and obliterated the sulfur mine entirely. The crater left behind by that blast still looks otherworldly -- hikers who reach it along the narrow ridgeline called Ushi-no-se, the "cow's back," describe the sensation of standing on the edge of the moon.

Despite its volcanic temperament -- the most recent eruption was in 1996 -- Mount Adatara is one of the most accessible peaks in Fukushima. It was selected by mountaineer and author Kyuya Fukada as one of Japan's Hyakumeizan, the 100 Famous Mountains, for its grace, history, and individuality. The Adatara Ropeway at the Adatara Kogen Ski Resort lifts hikers to roughly 1,350 meters in ten minutes, with panoramic views of the Adatara range, distant Azuma Kofuji, and the Zao mountains beyond. From the upper station, even beginners can reach the 1,728-meter summit in about ninety minutes. But the mountain saves its finest spectacle for late September and October, when Japanese oak, beech, and other deciduous trees set the entire mountainside ablaze in yellow, red, and orange. The autumn color, spreading in waves below the ropeway, draws thousands for momiji-gari -- the traditional art of autumn leaf viewing.

The hot springs that ring the mountain's base have drawn visitors for centuries, and the ski resort keeps the slopes busy through winter. But it is Chieko's sky that lingers. On clear days, standing on the summit with the Tohoku landscape unfolding in every direction, the sky overhead does feel different from the one that hangs over Tokyo -- wider, deeper, a more saturated blue. Whether that is poetry or meteorology or simple altitude, each visitor decides for themselves. Kotaro Takamura spent his final years in a small hut in Iwate Prefecture, still writing, still grieving. He died in 1956. His wife's words outlived them both, fixed forever to this mountain. The sky above Mount Adatara has become one of Japan's most poetic landmarks -- not for anything you can see on the ground, but for what you see when you look up.