SUSTAINABILITY
The Mountain is Not a Product
We say this plainly at the start: the practice of Yamabushi belongs to anyone who seeks it. The faith is not for sale.
But practice requires people. People require stable lives. And the place where this practice has been alive for 1,400 years requires active, ongoing support to remain what it is.
The price of a Yamabushido program is set with all of that in mind. This page opens the reasoning, and the numbers, so you can see exactly where it goes.
Where Your Participation Reaches
When you join a Yamabushido program, your payment moves in two directions.
Toward the Faith at Dewa Sanzan
In 2025, around 15% of our total company expenditure went directly to the faith sector at Dewa Sanzan — the pilgrim lodges, the shrine, and the temples that hold this practice. Within that, the lodges received 63.9%, Dewa Sanzan Shrine 29.3%, and other temples and shrines 6.8%.
It is worth being clear about what the lodges are. They are not simply places to sleep. The sendatsu — senior yamabushi who serve as guides — are based in the lodges. So are the shojin ryori chefs who prepare the ritual vegetarian cuisine, and the practitioners who carry the ceremonial knowledge of the mountain. When money reaches the lodges, it reaches the practice itself.
The way this money moves also matters. The flow of faith at Dewa Sanzan has always worked as something closer to a gift returned to a gift — people came, were received, and offered something back. That offering sustained the people and places that received them. What we send to the bearers of the faith is meant to belong to that older flow.
Of the close to thirty pilgrim lodges that stood in Toge a decade ago, six have closed since. Around twenty-four remain. Each closure is not just a building going dark. It is a sendatsu, a kitchen, a set of relationships between guide and believer, gone. This is the ground on which we stand, and the context in which we direct our payments.
Toward the Community and Region
Around 34% of our total 2025 expenditure remained in the village of Toge — through wages paid to permanent staff living here year-round, and through maintaining our base in a former pilgrim lodge.
That building deserves a word. When we took it on, it was not simply vacant. The decision had already been made to dismantle it and return the land to the shrine. We stepped in before that happened. The building is now our office, a working space, and a small proof that the fabric of this village can be held together rather than quietly removed.
We employ on permanent contracts, with full statutory social insurance. We aim to pay wages at a level where those who carry them are net contributors to Japan's social systems — a meaningful distinction in a country whose working-age population is declining and whose social support costs are rising year by year.
The Place We're Part of
Toge, the pilgrim village at the foot of Mt. Haguro, is a community of around 1,100 people. It was once home to over 300 shukubo. Today twenty-four remain.
In 2024, Toge was selected for the Green Destinations Top 100. Every other community recognised in Japan that year was a municipality — a city, a town, a government-administered destination with institutional resources behind it. Toge is none of those things. It is a village of 1,100 people that has sustained a living culture of mountain faith for 1,400 years. That is what was recognised.
It was not selected for its scenery. It was selected because the people here are actively working to hold something alive.
From April 2026, the 羽黒財団 (Haguro Foundation) began collecting an entry contribution from visitors to the mountain. When you come with Yamabushido, you are part of that. You are not passing through. You are contributing to the ground on which this practice still stands.
The Team Behind This
Megurun, the company that runs Yamabushido, finished 2025 at a loss. We say this plainly. The commitments we carry — to the faith sector, to our staff, to this building, to this village — cost more, right now, than the current price fully meets.
We have chosen to hold those commitments anyway, and to ask the price to do the work of closing that gap over time. A company that wanted only to grow its returns would have made different choices: lower wages, avoided social insurance, chosen a cheaper base, directed less to the bearers of the faith. We have not made those choices.
Two young people from our team have chosen to settle in Toge and made their lives here doing this work. A former pilgrim lodge that was weeks from demolition is alive and in daily use. These are not engineered outcomes. They are what happens when you don't optimise for short-term return.
What Standing on This Side Means
We are not asking you to take any of this on faith. The numbers are open. The reasoning is here. What we are asking is simpler: if this speaks to you — if the practice matters, if the place matters, if the people who are holding it together matter — then your participation is one concrete way to stand on the side that supports rather than the side that receives.
The mountain has been generous for a very long time. It is beginning to ask something back. That is not a warning. It is an invitation.
If that is you, you are welcome here.
Contact us for more details.