Mt. Fuji is symbolic of Japan because of its beautiful scenery and height (3776m a.s.l). At the end of the 19th century, Mt. Fuji became an important meteorological observation point. The Mount Fuji Weather Station was established in 1932, owing to the great efforts of pioneers in observation such as Mr. & Mrs. Itaru Nonaka (Obs. period: Oct.-Dec., 1895) and Mr. Junichi Satoh (Obs. period: Jan.-Feb., 1926), and has been operated manually by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) since then.

The station has been proved very effective in forecasting typhoons and other meteorological observations, as well as being a proud symbol nationwide for engineers and researchers. Recently, however, it was announced that Mount Fuji Weather Station is moving to an unattended operation in 2004. Terminating the manual operation means losing the precious living knowledge of high mountainous station maintenance. Once lost, this knowledge is difficult to recover.

Currently, meteorological data at the summit of Mt.Fuji are collected automatically by the meteorological equipment installed in the Mt.Fuji Weather Station. However it must be stressed that this highest point of our land is the perfect site for a variety of research that utilizes the benefits of the high altitude, as well as for weather observation.

In other countries, an array of achievements has been made by research conducted in high-altitude bases, such as the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii which is noted for greenhouse gas observations, the High Altitude Research Station Jungfraujoch in Switzerland, which conducts astronomical research, and the Monte Rosa Laboratory in Italy, which is famous for high altitude medicine. In this field, Japan is far behind.

With this as the background, we established NPO Mount Fuji Research Station (former Valid Utilization of Mount Fuji Weather Station), a nonprofit organization with more than 250 members including researchers and mountaineers in order to make good use of the former MT. Fuji Weather Station. The organization began observation and research at the Mount Fuji Weather Station after receiving permission to use the facilities from the Japan Meteorological Agency int the summer of 2007, when the station became available for summer research work by the private sector.

For two months between July and August each year since 2007, research studies have been conducted at the Mount Fuji Weather Station, on themes including atmospheric chemistry, high altitude medical sciences, cosmic-ray science, ecology, etc. The researchers who took part in the Mt. Fuji project have been increasing in number yearly.

Topics from 2005 are summarized in Table 1-2 of the Booklet 'Mount Fuji Research Station'.