Data sources

How the mountains in this catalog were chosen, and the sources of the elevation, location, park and volcano data, descriptions and 3D views.

Mountains included

The 156 mountains come from two sources, and every card and mountain page shows which:

Hokkaido 100 Mountains (108): the 100 mountains chosen in the 2003 revised edition of Hokkaido Hyakumeizan (Yama-Kei), plus the eight chosen only in the 1993 first edition.
Other GSI major mountains (48): Hokkaido peaks in the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, Elevations of Major Mountains in Japan (Japanese) (March 31, 2026 edition) that are not among the Hokkaido 100 Mountains.

About the Hokkaido 100 Mountains: The selection follows the list in the Japanese Wikipedia article "Hokkaido Hyakumeizan", which is also the source for membership of the 100 Famous Japanese Mountains.

Elevations and summit positions

Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, Elevations of Major Mountains in Japan (Japanese) (March 31, 2026 edition): 127 mountains, including summit positions.
Triangulation and elevation points on GSI Maps: the other 28 mountains, read from GSI vector tiles.
Mount Kirigishi: with no elevation figure at the summit on GSI Maps, we show the highest value near the summit in the GSI elevation tiles (10 m mesh), marked "about".

Location and area

We looked up the municipality of the summit, and of eight points 300 m around it, with the GSI reverse geocoder. Where the summit is near a municipal boundary, several municipalities are listed. Areas follow the summit's municipality, using the same six areas as our roadside station catalog.

Parks and volcanoes

National and quasi-national parks were checked against the MLIT, National Land Numerical Information: Natural Park Areas (Japanese) (2015). Parks are shown under their current names; the Hidaka-sanmyaku Erimo Quasi-National Park became a national park in 2024. Prefectural natural parks are not yet covered. For the other GSI major mountains, the park was identified from Hokkaido 100 Mountains, lakes and waterfalls with known parks inside the same park polygon; Mount Mokoto and Mount Era, with no such reference, are shown as unconfirmed.

Active volcanoes are the mountains named as volcano positions in the Japan Meteorological Agency, National Catalogue of the Active Volcanoes in Japan (4th ed.), list of active volcanoes (Japanese).

Descriptions

Descriptions contain only facts confirmed in materials from public bodies. For 31 mountains they draw on the Japan Meteorological Agency's volcano pages, the Ministry of the Environment's national park pages and the Agency for Cultural Affairs' Natural Monument records. Where no such material exists, the description gives only the data above. Sources are listed under each description. The English descriptions are translations of the Japanese ones; all sources are in Japanese.

3D view

The 3D view on each page is built in your browser from GSI Tiles (elevation tiles and the latest seamless aerial photos). The year of the imagery varies by location. The thumbnails in the lists are captures of this 3D view.

Maps

The maps use GSI Tiles (pale map) and OpenStreetMap.