Mount Ōmine (大峰山, Ōmine-san), is a sacred mountain in Nara, Japan, famous for its three tests of courage.

Fukuda's three criteria for the selection of 100 celebrated mountains was their physical grandeur, historical and spiritual significance to Japan, and its individuality, meaning it must have a unique shape, phenomenon or event associated with it.

A thirteen-foot-tall stone pillar reading "From here [onward] is the zone restricted to women" (從是女人結界) stands at the main trailhead to the Sanjōgatake 山上ヶ岳 peak of the mountain.

Before both gate and stone pillar, a signboard roughly six feet tall and three feet wide has been erected, stating in English and Japanese, "'No Woman Admitted': Regulation of this holly [sic] mountain Ominesan prohibits any woman from climbing farther through this gate according to the religious tradition.

[10] Author Edwin Bernbaum, who holds a PhD in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, says that the religious leaders in Japan banned women from Omine because they were a distraction to their ascetic practices.

A 1960 TIME story expands on Birnbaum's notion:[11] Said 75-year-old Abbot Kaigyoku Okada: "Can a man meditate on the Buddha in the midst of passing geishas?

The abbot may have been thinking of a line popular with the mountain priests: "Woman is the root of disaster that even 500 reincarnations cannot absolve.