(登山の日) The story behind this trend in Social Media today
03-10-2026
I’ll look up what “登山の日” refers to and why it’s trending on social media today.登山の日 is a Japanese memorial day on October 3. It is trending today because the date falls tomorrow, and posts, event notices, and autumn hiking photos are already circulating ahead of it.The date is a wordplay: 10 is read “to” and 3 is read “san” (or “zan”), so 10/3 sounds like “tozan,” the Japanese word for mountain climbing. Early October also lines up with clearer autumn weather and the start of foliage season, which made the date a practical choice as well as a pun.The day was set in the early 1990s by the Japan Alpine Guide Association (the forerunner of today’s Japan Mountain Guides Association). Some accounts place the first gathering in 1991 and the formal call to observe the day in 1992; the proposer is often named as Shigeno Tatsuji. The stated aim was to get more people outdoors, to notice the scale of the mountains, and to thank nature for that experience, while also stressing safe climbing. Early plans treated October 3–11 as a short “climbing week,” with guided outings and events. Some explanations also link the October timing to the Japanese Alpine Club, which was founded in October 1905, though the pun is the reason most often cited.It is not a national holiday. Japan’s public holiday connected with mountains is Mountain Day (山の日) on August 11, which began in 2016 and is broader in meaning. 登山の日 remains an unofficial memorial day kept by guide groups, tourism offices, and climbers.What is showing up on social media now is the usual pre-day wave: explainers of the pun, photos from recent hikes, local campaigns (for example day-hike lists and summit events), and a music release timed to the date. The band Super Tozan-bu, whose name itself means “super mountain-climbing club,” is premiering a video of its members climbing Tsubakuro-dake in the Northern Alps, built around their song “Tsubakuro,” on the evening of October 3.