Nishimuraya Yohachi is known to have been a member of the Fuji-kō, an Edo period cult centred around Mount Fuji. Founded by an ascetic named Hasegawa Kakugyō (1541-1646), the cult venerated the mountain as a female deity, and encouraged its members to climb it. In doing so, they would be reborn, purified and... able to find happiness. The cult waned in the Meiji period, and, though it persists to this day, it has been subsumed into Shintō sects.