AT DAWN on the first day of 2013 the snowy peak of Mount Fuji, 100 kilometres (62 miles) away, peeped out from between two nondescript apartment blocks. Residents have been coming to this lane in downtown Tokyo, known as Fujimizaka (“hill for viewing Mount Fuji”), for decades, to gaze at the national symbol to the southwest. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” yelled Makoto Kaneko, an 86-year-old local shopkeeper, at a small crowd of bleary-eyed early-risers. “It won’t be here this time next year.”

Mr Kaneko remembers trudging through this neighbourhood in March 1945, after American bombers had reduced it to ruins. Donald Richie, an American who chronicled post-war Japan, marvelled at the view of Fuji’s perfect cone from all around the flattened city—a vista immortalised in two series of woodblock prints by Hokusai (see picture) and Hiroshige, two 19th-century artists. But post-war rebuilding obscured almost all street-level views.

Two years ago one of Japan’s biggest property companies announced plans to build a 45-storey block of flats which would obscure the view from Fujimizaka. Opponents appealed to the company, the city government and even UNESCO, which will decide by June if Mount Fuji merits the status of a World Heritage Site. Construction has temporarily stopped, but another 11-storey building is already going up. By New Year’s Day 2014 the view will be gone.

Mr Kaneko plans one last push. Later in January, on one of the two days of the year when the sun sets directly behind Fuji, he will distribute notices urging viewers to help halt construction. He concedes it is a long shot. Just down the hill another crowd had gathered near the city’s newest engineering miracle, the 634-metre (2,080 feet) Skytree Tower. “I’ve seen the view of Mount Fuji from up there,” said one man. “It’s far better.”