Greenland: a darker shade of white

Review: a Swiss gallery shows Sebastian Copeland's images of the evanescent ice.

Olten, famous for its rail junction, is separated from the settlement of Qaanaaq in northern Greenland by a full thirty degrees of latitude. 

On a suspiciously warm April afternoon, this made the Swiss town an ideal venue for taking in some arctic photography by Sebastian Copeland, one of the genre’s most prominent exponents. Congratulations to IPFO’s Haus der Fotografie for staging this well-curated exhibition in its homely yet spacious gallery.

Size does matter when exhibiting Greenland. The landscape’s scale demands a corresponding expansiveness in print dimensions. And Copeland certainly comes through here. Many of the photos shown at IPFO have previously appeared in his acclaimed book The Arctic: A Darker Shade of White. Yet they surely gain much when viewed on a scale of metres rather than centimetres.

Intriguingly, Copeland opts for the panoramic format in many of his most impressive images. It might be the near-infinite horizons of polar landscapes that pull so many photographers in this direction. Tiina Itkonen and Stuart D. Klipper, for example, have used wide-format Technorama-type cameras to put together complete circumpolar collections (thanks, Snowhenge, for introducing these artists). 

Unlike them, Copeland hasn’t gone the whole panoramic hog. A variety of formats was probably better suited to his book. And they work well for the exhibition too. 

In terms of format, he seems to have chosen a conventional portrait or landscape treatment for most of his iceberg studies. Their scale, scope and lighting are almost painterly. 

Entitled “Breakthrough”, one of these images gets a whole gallery wall to itself. And rightly so: to my mind, this study invites comparison with works such as Frederic Church’s famous oil of The Icebergs.

Lighting is equally a key element in Copeland’s portraits of Greenlanders. These are presented in a sepia-toned monochrome that was probably not straight out of the camera. 

It’s worth sitting through the accompanying video about “the making of” these images. This shows how Copeland turned an Inuit village's chapel and schoolroom into a makeshift studio, complete with lights and reflectors. Gearheads will note that he used a Canon DSLR with Zeiss lenses.

The technical quality of his images bears witness to Copeland’s background as a commercial photographer before he turned to expeditioning. It stands to reason that skills honed in product or fashion photography can be turned to account when capturing images of icebergs or Greenlanders. This does raise a question, though – what is the product in these circumpolar use cases?

A partial answer comes from the blurb at the exhibition’s entrance. Against the background of the photographer’s face, suitably ice-encrusted, it reads as follows:

For 30 years Sebastian Copeland has been documenting his expeditions and adventures in the form of books, exhibitions, events and films - transforming himself and inspiring the people and organizations that he comes into contact with. He is a climate analyst, award-winning photographer and aspirational athlete and combines these tools to powerfully communicate the urgency of action on climate change and sustainable growth…

Some have queried motivations of this kind, given the carbon output involved in travelling to places like Qaanaaq. But to leave such misgivings aside – I refer you to fellow blogger Snowhenge to give them voice – a more fundamental critique looms. That is, in an age of climate denial, photography as a tool to communicate the urgency of action on climate change just doesn’t seem to be working.

Landscape photography in Greenland has a lengthy history. It can be traced back, via luminaries and activists such as Ragnar Axelsson and James Balog, for well over a century. Yet, whatever their merits as artists, none of Greenland's many photographers seem to have exerted so much as a milli-erg on actual policymaking.

Does that mean that photographing icebergs is futile? By no means. As the navigator John Davis said, Greenland is “the place of greatest dignitie”. As such, it cries out to be documented. And one day, or rather sooner, we will be grateful for the diligent work of Sebastian Copeland and his peers.

This brings us to those pioneers of colour photography in Greenland, the Swiss scientific expedition of 1912. By good fortune, their legacy is well preserved. Using a combination of hand-tinted glass slides and Autochrome colour prints, the expeditioners recorded a world that has utterly vanished – whether coastal glaciers, traditional Greenlandic communities or the people they portrayed. And their images have the freshness and charm that is reserved for first-comers.

Recent museum events have shown that individual images from the 1912 expedition can be successfully printed up to Copeland-ish dimensions and beyond, as demonstrated by the Swiss National Museum's display panels below:

And yet, to my knowledge, nobody in the past century has ever staged a pure photography exhibition showing a decent array of these remarkable pictures. 

If there should be any curators out there who find this curious, please get in touch. And together we might perhaps have a go at making it happen.

References and further reading

The exhibition of Sebastian Copeland’s Greenland photographs at the IPFO Haus der Fotografie Olten, Switzerland, runs from 11 April to 19 July 2026. 

IPFO stands for the International Photo Festival Olten, a prominent Swiss photography event featuring exhibitions, workshops and lectures. The organization also maintains the Haus der Fotografie (House of Photography), a permanent venue for exhibitions.

Sebastian Copeland, The Arctic: A Darker Shade of White, Rizzoli International Publications, September 2024.

Arctic dreams in Autochrome: How the polar pioneers pursued photography in colour, One Hundred Mountains (this blog).

Alfred de Quervain, Quer durchs Grönlandeis, 1914, available in German in:

Alfred de Quervain, Quer durchs Grönlandeis: Die Expeditionen 1909 und 1912/13, Eingeleitet von Peter Haffner Mit einem Nachwort von Marcel de Quervain Mit Fotos, Verlag Neue Züricher Zeitung, 1998. 

or in English:

Alfred de Quervain, Across Greenland's Ice Cap: The Remarkable Swiss Scientific Expedition of 1912, with an introduction by Martin Hood, Andreas Vieli and Martin Lüthi, McGill-Queen's University Press, May 2022, with more than sixty colour images.

Beyond the bear bell

Risk management tools for Hyakumeizan fans, with a hint from Italy

17 March: “That’ll be bear scat,” she said pointing at the ground next to my boots. I expressed surprise: after all, we weren’t even on a mountain hike. This was more like a spring morning stroll on a low hill bordering farmland on the edge of the Sensei's hometown. Classic satoyama territory, in fact.

Smoking "fun"? Suspected bear scat from a hill near us.

We do seem to be hearing and seeing more of the ursine types. A few years ago, a cub ran across our trail on Genanpo. We were serenaded from a thicket on Hakusan. And we saw a pawprint in the snow on Honoke, earlier this year. Such personal encounters tend to support what statistics and news reports are suggesting: Honshu’s bear population has come roaring back.

Before you hit up Rakuten for a can of bear spray – more on that later – it’s worth checking whether you are travelling in bear country at all. This information sheet from the Toyota City authorities helps you do so. Bear scat comes in several different forms, it explains, depending on the creature's diet:

Bear essentials: how to recognise their scat and pawprints.
Courtesy of the Toyota City bear information sheet.

Bears also announce themselves through their pawprints, scratches on tree trunks and the so-called nests of tangled branches that they make while gathering nuts or fruit. To prevent confusion, the information sheet also shows the droppings, hoofprints or scratches left by other kinds of forest denizen such as deer and wild boar.

Then, after taking a deep breath, it would be wise to read Emma Goto’s admirably cool and collected risk assessment over on her blog. Despite the rising number of reported bear encounters, including fatal ones, she points out, “the probability of you actually being attacked by a bear on the trail is still statistically very, very low.”

That may be, but ardent Hyakumeizan baggers can’t confine themselves to the mountains of Shikoku, where bears are few, or Kyushu, where none have been sighted for years. In other regions, the Hyakumeizan mountains might be less frequented by bears, as Emma suggests. But this would hold true only for the routes most frequented by hikers.

Bear witness: Kumamap shows you where the heat is.

Fortunately, it’s possible to estimate the risk of encountering a bear on any specific Hyakumeizan peak. This is thanks to the work of Kumamap, who run a database that aggregates reports of bear encounters all over Japan. Helpfully, they have already parsed that data to rank the One Hundred Mountains by bear safety.

The results, the authors say, are surprising – and they certainly surprised me. None of the top three mountains are in Akita or Iwate, the prefectures most in the news for bear attacks. Rather, they are Norikura in Gifu, where a skyline road brings thousands of day trippers straight into bear habitat, Bandai in Fukushima, where trails and ski resorts push deep into bear territories, and Yake-dake in the Northern Alps.

Into the danger zone? Ski-mountaineers on Norikura.

Taking a regional view, there are more encounters in the Chubu and Kanto than in Tohoku. And Hokkaido might not be as dangerous as you may have thought, despite that horrifying incident on Rausu. But you'd better study Kumamap’s full analysis for yourself. It’s required reading for any Hyakumeizan fan.

So how should hikers protect themselves? The usual nostrums include walking in a group, or if hiking solo, choosing a trail with other people on it. There are established guidelines for what to do if you actually see a bear. And, of course, most hikers carry a bear bell, and some pack bear spray too.

Some doubt whether these devices really work. Project Hyakumeizan feels unqualified to join this debate, having never actually set eyes on a bear in Japan. But like the Sensei, who has several times been within nodding distance of one, he does carry a bell. 

Bear belles: a chime in time saves nine ...

And there’s no harm in referring readers to the advice of an expert, as quoted in the Japan Times:

I carry bear spray and three bear bells, [says Muto Shun, a government geologist who ranges through the mountains of Iwate]. My bear spray is set at my right waist, where I can reach it with my right hand immediately. When walking through bushy places or moving at a fast pace, I have my bear spray out from the holster and in my hand in case of close encounters. My bear bells are placed on both sides of my body so that I can be heard well from all directions.

Vested wisdom: Walk, don't run, through her territory....

Can other countries add to this stock of precautionary wisdom? Italy reintroduced the brown bear into its Apennines mountain range during the 2000s. As this population numbers just a hundred or so individuals, bear encounters are far fewer than in Honshu. Nevertheless, since 2014, bears have attacked people eight times.

Six of these cases involved a female bear with yearling cubs, and in one case a female bear killed the victim. It may be that this bear – the infamous JJ4 – was unusually aggressive. It may also be significant that the victim was a trail runner.

The circumstances of the Italian tragedy recall the – fortunately non-fatal – attack that befell Yamanoi Yasushi near Tokyo in 2011. But let Sartaj Ghuman tell the story, as he masterfully does in his profile of the elite climber published in Alpinist 62:

Nine years ago, Yamanoi-san was running in the forested hills near his house. He had to watch where he put his feet on the narrow, rocky path, and he almost bumped into the bear before he saw her. And then he noticed the cub that she was hiding behind her. He put his arm up instinctively, and the bear’s teeth bore down into his flesh. With a jerk of her massive head, she sent him flying through the air. He landed in some brambles, and before he knew it, the bear was upon him again. This time she bit into his face. Blood streamed. It took him about forty minutes to crawl down the mountain to his house, and then his neighbor called for an ambulance…

Statistically insignificant as they may be, these two incidents do suggest one more point of practical etiquette when visiting the realm of the mountain monarchs. So by all means know your bear signs, refer to Kumamap, and let them know you’re coming.

And then, above all, walk – don’t run – through their territory.

Confessions of a blogspot bumbler

And why it might pay to start posting about industrial descalers.

A big hand for Bre’er David over at Ridgeline Images. Anybody who wants to start a blog needs to read his admirably transparent post on What It Costs to Run My Blog in 2026 – And How Much It Earns.

SEO spike: Yari pulls in the readers, at least on this blog.

Bottom line is: If you’re serious about building a blog with genuine reach, start with a self-hosted WordPress.org setup from day one, like David’s own. Or, if technically adept, like Emma Goto, you could build your own static site.

This leaves the free and easy-to-use Google Blogger/BlogSpot solution somewhat out in the cold. The problem, David says, is visibility. Since Google tends to demote blogspot.com subdomains, you’ll get less attention, lowering your blog’s earning potential.

To which I’d add another beef: Blogger’s limited range of templates and design options won’t let you max out your mountain photography, as a more bespoke platform might. With similar effects on attention and earnings.

Before you brush off Blogger, though, you have to ask whether any of this matters. If it’s revenues you seek, then you need to blog about food, beauty tips, or technology. Blogs about hiking in Japan limit themselves to a niche.

And if you further limit yourself to just One Hundred (Japanese) Mountains, then you shoehorn yourself into a superniche. So costs need to be kept commensurably low. Which means that Blogger will do you nicely.

As for a blog’s look and feel, you might be better off with Behance, flickr, 500px and their ilk if photography is your main thing. You could even write a bit more under your images on Insta.

Or, to turn that idea on its head, you could use Blogger to write well-regarded photography posts without ever publishing an image. Andrew Molitor’s been doing (or did) just that for years.

What about attention? Revenues or none, there’s no point writing a Japan blog for the applause of just one hand clapping. Of course, it depends what you want to achieve. This blog, One Hundred Mountains, was started back in 2008 with a single purpose in mind – to find a publisher for a forthcoming translation of Fukada Kyūya’s Nihon Hyakumeizan.

Until then, we’d drawn a blank. About thirty publishers had been approached in the traditional way, via email or letter. But all found the book a bit too superniche. One said it contained too many obscure Japanese place names. Another quoted five thousand pounds, which seemed generous. Until it dawned that he wanted me to pay him, not the other way round.

Then a sample Hyakumeizan chapter was posted on this blog, during its very first month. This soon caught the attention of an American academic – thanks David F. – who sent over a list of about ten US publishers who he thought might be interested. And the first one on the list spoke for the book. 

Always, you should be careful what you wish for. At a stroke, the blog was deprived of its prime reason for existing. And since then it has strayed hobbyhorsically off-topic, into realms as unrelated as cats, photography tips, and arctic expeditions.

Blog mavens counsel against such hobbyhorsicality:

“Blogs should focus on one topic to build authority, trust, and a dedicated audience, making it easier to monetize and rank in search engines. A niche focus allows search engines to understand your site's purpose, boosting SEO, while offering a cohesive experience that keeps visitors engaged and encourages them to return.” 

Thus Google AI, no doubt riffing off many a human blogger's posts.

To which Project Hyakumeizan retorts, riffing off Tristram Shandy, that “so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him – pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?”

Manga sell better than mountains...

In deference to Google AI, it has to be admitted that this blog’s most-viewed post is impeccably on-topic. This is Life and death on Japan’s Matterhorn, which concerns Yarigatake, probably the most prominent of the One Hundred Mountains after Mount Fuji.

But the reason for the post’s popularity has more to do with manga than with mountains: it features Katō Buntarō, the solo alpinist who posthumously became the hero of a best-selling graphic story series. Stands to reason that the blog’s second most popular post also concerns Katō and his soloist's philosophy. 

Here’s the thing, though. The blog’s third most-read post, Legends from the Alps, doesn’t deal with Japan at all. Nor does it say much about mountains. It reviews an exhibition at the Swiss National Museum about folk tales and superstitions. Why this post should be so popular is entirely mystifying. 

It does suggest, however,  that if you write something that interests folk, they will find it. Even on Blogger.

And here’s another thing about attention. You won't believe the number of hopefuls who try to post comments advertising their industrial descalers. Luckily, Blogger’s filters do a good job of screening them out. 

Then again, if you ever get bored of life in a superniche, you could do worse than to start blogging about One Hundred Industrial Descalers.

Success would be guaranteed. Yes, even on blogspot.com. Or do I mean especially on blogspot.com?

A meizanologist's diary (122)

3 February: Kōya-san’s gravitational well extends as far as Kansai International Airport. A large poster advertising the mountain greets you at the terminal's entrance. 

And to board the plane, we walk over an airbridge manufactured by ShinMaywa, the flying boat maker whose corporate monument we inspected at Kōya-san's Oku-no-in just a couple of days ago.

Forty minutes after take-off we get an unusual perspective on a cone-shaped mountain as it rises into view behind the Southern Alps. Then lunch is served and my neighbour and I fall into conversation. He’s just been touring Japan for the first time. I mention our recent trip to Kōya-san.

At this, the woman sitting in the aisle seat joins in. Her father was a Shingon priest and trained on Kōya-san, she says, before showing us a picture of him, in sacerdotal robes, standing in front of his home temple on the mountain. Even as Mt Fuji falls astern, the Daishi is everywhere.

A meizanologist's diary (121)

1 February: it's still dark when we shuffle our way into the Fukuchi-in’s ornate main hall. Even at a few minutes before 7 am, we are almost too late. All the seats close to the oil stove are taken, which means that the air around the remaining ones is close to the temperature outside. That’s fine: we are both dressed for an alpine bivouac. Soon three monks file in and make their obeisances towards the inner sanctuary.

Although attendance at the temple’s morning service is entirely voluntary, it seems that most of the Fukuchi-in's guests are present, whether Japanese or foreign. 

And why would we not be? According to Philip Nicoloff, the Rishu-zammai-hōyo, designated by Kōbō Daishi himself as Shingon’s primary daily service, helps to deflect bad karma, advances individuals towards enlightenment, solicits material benefit, assuages the sufferings of the dead, and serves as a vehicle for meditation...

After breakfast, we walk out into a frigid breeze and set out for the Oku-no-in on foot. Black ice glazes the pavements. When the Sensei takes a tumble, we find refuge on a passing bus. This takes us to the Oku-no-in’s carpark, in this season a vast empty concrete space.

Monks in a snowstorm (detail).
Photography and copyright, Nagasaka Yoshimitsu.

Repairing to a café, we warm up with a cappuccino while admiring the photos exhibited on the wall. They are the work of a local photographer, Nagasaka Yoshimitsu. On the evidence of his pictures, Kōya-san was even colder back in Shōwa times.

Thus fortified, we take the back route into the Oku-no-in’s cryptomeria groves. This leads us into a long avenue of corporate monuments. The first, featuring an Apollo-Saturn rocket, commemorates employees of the company formerly known as Shin-Meiwa and before that as Kawanishi. They're more famous for their handsome flying boats than for rocketry, though. 

We take note too of an on-brand stele put up by the Ueshima Coffee Company, whose products have just revived us. Not to mention a memorial to the makers of a fermented milk drink. Professor Nicoloff writes that modern corporations have built almost as many monuments on Kōya-san (108) as did the feudal daimyōs of old (110). 

Even so, not everything here is business-sponsored. A side-chapel slightly away from the main path is dedicated to or by the Jōdo sect. There's a saying that Tendai Buddhism is for the Court, Shingon for the nobles, Zen for the warriors, and Jōdo for the people. Up here, though, matters may be less clear-cut.

So what is the side-chapel doing here? Has it anything to do with the twelfth-century episode when selected elements of Jōdo doctrine and worship helped to re-energise the Shingon faith? Again, I get the feeling that the Kōya-san we see today resembles an iceberg that floats over a very deep keel of history.

Sun is starting to filter through the trees as we walk around the Tōrōdō’s gallery of bronze lanterns. On the north side, we wait for a group of pilgrims to pay their respects to the Daishi’s mausoleum – if mausoleum is the right word, given the belief that he continues to meditate for eternity there. Then we start our walk back through the Oku-no-in.

By now, the sun and some rock salt have turned the frozen snow into slush, making the footing less lethal. We've warmed up enough to stop and examine the monuments that line the stone-flagged path through the trees. Today, it seems, the dead greatly outnumber the living in this wood between the worlds.

Receding between the trees as far as the eye can see, the memorials bring to mind the rest of the parable from yesterday evening’s glance at the Fukuchi-in’s breviary:

Then, Yama asked him once more if he had ever seen a dead man. The man replied: "Yes, my Lord, I have been in the presence of death many times." Yama said to him: "It is because you did not recognize in these men. the heavenly messengers sent to warn you that you are brought to this. If you had recognized these messengers and taken their warnings, you would have changed your course, and would not have come to this place of suffering.”

The Sensei is surprised to see a stele that commemorates Akechi Mitsuhide, who assassinated his own overlord, Oda Nobunaga. Soon we realise that everyone is here, regardless of their politics or persuasions – poets and pilgrims, adversaries and antagonists, whether Allied soldiers or Navy pilots.

We pass a memorial to the haiku master Matsuo Bashō on the main path, but must scale a flight of steps away from it to visit the overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The row of steles that commemorates him is surprisingly modest for somebody so ostentatious in life. Kōya-san is a great leveller.

Further on is a sign that marks the spot where the Daishi interrupted his eternal meditation to come and pronounce the funeral obsequies over the body of his departed friend, the Emperor Saga (786–842). Even today, records Philip Nicoloff, no other emperor is held in such esteem on Kōya-san. He once sent the monk a set of warm clothes, accompanied with a wistful poem:

This quiet monk has lived on the peak in the clouds

For a long time. 

Here far from you, I think of the deep mountain still cold

Even though it is Spring.

The pines and the cedars keep silent.

How long have you been breathing the mist and fog ...

Under a cloudless sky, a stone bridge brings us back to the high street.

We drop in at Kōya-san’s oldest coffee shop for another capuccino before the cable-car (or funicular railway) wafts us to the waiting local train. 

We’re still several hundred metres above sea-level when the doors rumble open at a deserted platform to reveal a grove of palm trees, their leaves fluttering in the warm afternoon breeze. 

It’s a different planet down here.

***

1 February (later): The train is making its way up to the watershed between the Koya mountains and the Osaka basin when the woman sitting opposite us nudges her partner and says ‘yuki no yama’.

Looking over my shoulder in the direction she’s pointing, I see a line of snowy peaks, complete with fluted white walls and avalanche-raked gullies. Surely there can’t be mountains of this almost Himalayan loft in the Kii Peninsula? Then we realise that we’re looking right across Nagoya Bay through a gap in the hills to Shizuoka. So these must be the Southern Alps.

Then a tunnel steals the vision away and I’m left contemplating the famous episode from Tale of the Heike, as quoted in Japan’s most famous mountain book:

"In dismal spirits, Shigehira traversed the ivied path at Mount Utsu and journeyed beyond Tegoshi. Snowy peaks appeared far to the north; and, upon making enquiry, he was told they were the Shirane Mountains in Kai. He expressed his feelings in verse, restraining tears:

I do not desire
To cling to this wretched life
Yet, most happily,
I have survived to behold
The Shirane mountains of Kai."

Beheld on a winter’s day, those Shirane summits of Kai appear to us like mountains far beyond the world.

A meizanologist's diary (120)

31 January: Admittedly, the Sensei had difficulty in following my logic. We’d voted to take a break from ceaseless snow shovelling in her home town. And what was I proposing but an overnight stay on a freezing plateau, covered with snow, at eight hundred metres? OK, she agreed reluctantly, but only if there’s an onsen.

Which is why, around noon, we’re walking past a pair of bronze gate guardians into the precincts of the Fukuchi-in on Kōya-san, the mountain retreat founded by Kūkai in the ninth century. The temple and lodging house is one of Kōya-san's fifty-one hospitable “shukubō”, but the only one to have tapped a spring of geothermally heated water.

After dropping our light packs (best leave your bulky baggage down below), we take refuge from a snow shower in a restaurant. And then, since the snow keeps falling, we wash lunch down with a cappuccino in a nearby café.

When the snow flurries still won’t let up, we flee along Kōya’s high street to the only other modern structure we can think of – the Reihōkan museum. The temperature inside is close to ambient, but at least we’re sheltered from the wind.

In plastic slippers – boots must be left at the entrance – we pad past an impressive Heian-era Buddha into the museum’s largest exhibition hall. And at once we encounter great art. The sculptor Kaikei’s four heavenly kings stand out from anything else in the museum. Occupying the place of honour at the end of the hall, his Peacock King too will stick in memory, although it may demand a greater amount of cultural adjustment to appreciate.

Kaikei's Peacock King.
Image by courtesy of the Koya-san Reihokan Museum.

Almost forgetting the cold, we sit through a well-produced series of videos in an adjacent room that explain the background to the sculptures. I try to grapple with the historical context. Kaikei’s working life (c.1183–1236) overlapped the start of the Kamakura period, when a military junta imposed its will after a destructive civil war…

But what did this era look like to the artists? Did they deplore the collapse of Heian civilisation, or were they hailing a new age of stability? Or both. In the end, genius is genius, even if context matters too. Michelangelo might never have existed. But, if he did, then he could only have been a Renaissance man…

Deeply chilled – at least, in my case; the Sensei seems to be made of sterner stuff – we put on our boots and slip-slide out into the street. The snow has stopped falling, and some weak sunbeams are probing through the clouds.

Over the road is the Kongōbu-ji, the institution that heads up the four thousand or so temples of the Shingon faith. 

Skirting a snowball fight between some children by the belfry, we make for the main building. Again, we exchange boots for plastic slippers and skitter our way past a row of stately rooms.

In one of them, a bilingual sign tells us, Hideyoshi’s men forced his own nephew, Hidetsugu, to commit suicide – this was in August 1595 – as the prelude to having his entire line wiped out, women, children and all. They played politics for keeps in those days. Two decades later, much the same treatment was meted out to Hideyoshi’s own family. The Buddhist term inga-ōhō might have been invented for such cases. 

With relief, we proceed along a series of galleries that overlook a garden. An array of rocks rise up through the snow like peaks through a cloud sea. The stones are said to have been brought from Shikoku, where Kōya-san’s founder Kūkai was born in 774. That could make them kin to those strange rock pillars that I saw on Tsurugi-san the other day…

While I’m photographing the garden, the Sensei has slipped away. I find her sipping a welcoming cup of tea in a reception hall at the end of the tourist route. 

To remind us that we are still in a temple, an effigy of Kūkai presides benignly over the far end of the room.

Daylight has all but faded by the time we return to the Fukuchi-in, where we find our room already warm and cozy, our hosts having thoughtfully left a gas stove running. We take care with the heating: fires have repeatedly devastated Kōya-san, and the most destructive of them all started at this very shukobō in the winter of 1521. (I am obliged to Philip Nicoloff's book on Sacred Kōya-san for this historical detail.)

The Fukuchi-in’s corridors, however, remain unheated and it isn’t until I’ve visited the rotenburo, soaking up the geothermal heat while watching the sunset clouds scrolling by, that I feel sufficiently reanimated to examine the treasures they harbour.

Hidden in an alcove, and quite unexpected in a temple, is a collection of polished mineral sections from all over Japan. And even less to be expected is the suit of samurai armour lurking in a gloomy corner.

On closer inspection, it has a blue crucifix mounted on its helmet. A placard explains that this equipage belonged to the “Christian samurai” Takayama Ukon (c.1552–1615), who was eventually exiled for his faith. But, before that, he was a loyal supporter of Nobunaga – who came within an ace of reducing Kōya-san to ashes during his campaigns to unify Japan.

The characters for Kōya mean no more and no less than “high place”. But the suit of armour suggests it's a place with fathomless depths too.

After a simple but exquisite supper of shōjin ryōri, we retire to our room. There’s a TV there. There's wifi too, so we could equally well commune with our phones. Or we could dip into the bilingual breviary placed unobtrusively by the teapot, somewhat like a Gideon Bible. When I open it at random, the word “Yama” catches my eye. But not at all in the expected sense:

Once Yama, the legendary King of Hell, asked a man who had fallen into hell on account of his evil deeds in life, whether, during his life, he had ever met the three heavenly messengers. The man replied: "No, my Lord, I never met any such persons."

Yama asked him if he had ever met an old person bent with age and walking with a cane. The man replied: "Yes, my Lord, I have met such persons frequently." Then Yama said to him: "You are suffering this present punishment because you did not recognize in that old man a heavenly messenger sent to warn you that you must quickly change your ways before you, too, become an old man."

Yama asked him again if he had ever seen a poor, sick and friendless man. The man replied: "Yes, my Lord. I have seen many such men." Then, Yama said to him: "You have come into this place because you failed to recognize in these sick men the messengers from heaven sent to warn you of your own sickness …"

Before I can acquaint myself with the third heavenly messenger, I hear the merest hint of a snore from the futons. The Sensei is already asleep. It’s been a long day...