Mount Fuji Above the Autumn Maples — Arakurayama Sengen Park

This is the view people climb a hillside in Fujiyoshida to stand in front of, and it is almost entirely made of layers. In the near ground, maples and cherry trees have turned the colour of rust and butter. Behind them a red five-storey pagoda sits on its terrace with the grey tiles of each roof stacked like plates. Beyond that the town of Fujiyoshida spreads flat and pale across the valley floor, and behind everything, with a collar of cloud snagged around its lower slopes, stands Mount Fuji — an active stratovolcano, the highest mountain in Japan at a summit elevation of 3,776.24 metres, and quiet since it last erupted between 1707 and 1708.

The pagoda is younger and more sombre than most visitors assume. It is the Chūrei-tō, a memorial tower for the war dead rather than a Buddhist stupa, and it stands inside Arakurayama Sengen Park — a park of about 4.3 hectares laid out in October 1959 on the hillside of Mount Arakura, at 3353 Arakura in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture. The Sangoku Daiichisan Arakura Fuji Sengen Shrine is enshrined there and the mountain itself is treated as sacred ground. Around 650 Yoshino cherry trees fill the slope, which is why the spring version of this scene is the one that travels furthest; the Japanese Ministry of the Environment ranked the spot tenth among its "100 Views with Mount Fuji," and it has carried the cover of the Michelin Green Guide Japan. Autumn, when the maples go over and the crowds thin, is the quieter half of the year here.

As a jigsaw it splits cleanly into four bands, which is unusual and makes it a friendly one to sit down with. The sky is the easy opening — broad blue at the top, then a long drift of broken cloud running left to right that gives you a genuine seam to follow rather than a wall of identical blue. The pagoda is the anchor: strong vermilion against dark green pines, with the repeated roof lines giving you unmistakable landmarks. Fuji itself is the deceptive part, a wide grey-blue cone with very little texture, so those pieces are best left until the sky and the ridgeline below have pinned down where the edges must fall. Save the autumn canopy along the bottom for last if you want the challenge, or start there if you want the fun — the foliage is the most broken, most colourful third of the frame, and almost every piece in it is distinguishable from its neighbours.