“Mountains and the German Mind”

Review: a historical anthology traces a culture’s changing view of mountains.

Back in March, an encounter with the Taishо̄-era mountaineer Kitagawa Jun’ichirо̄ on Shikoku’s Ishizuchi-san left me with a problem. Where to find a good English version of a half-forgotten essay on alpine aesthetics that Kitagawa-sensei once translated from the original German into Japanese?

Fortunately, the local library was up to the challenge – the subject essay, Georg Simmel’s “On the aesthetics of the Alps” is Englished in full by Jens Klenner in Mountains and the German Mind: Translations from Gessner to Messner, 1541–2009 edited by Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann.

I did think of buying my own copy of this weighty tome (0.7 kg, 340 pages) but Amazon’s asking price was a hefty £118 or about 130 Swiss francs. Oof! And the one review on the site was far from compelling:

A useless book. Written for a cultured and self-complacent elite in their culture. A bad copy of Mountains of the Mind by McFarlane (sic). An anthological collection of boring texts not so much because they are ancient but because they are not inserted in a general narrative context that speaks more specifically about the mountains... (Translated from the Italian by Amazon)

Again, oof! But is it really fair to compare a sourcebook of translations from various authors with Robert Macfarlane’s scholarly yet readable Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination? The latter is best described as a highly personal account of how the Brits and a sprinkling of other Europeans changed their minds about mountains between the middle ages and the present.

In a way, the Amazon reviewer does have a point. Macfarlane’s masterpiece may have started out as a doctoral thesis, yet it was so well re-imagined and recast that it now regales a popular readership from the shelves of the world’s airport bookshops.

By contrast, Mountains and the German Mind is a collection of eighteen translated texts spanning nearly five centuries of the German-speaking peoples’ engagement with mountains. Together these essays show how mountains have served as sites of scientific inquiry, aesthetic reflection and nationalist ideology. And, moving into our own times, as amphitheatres of self-validation and promotion.

Many of the texts included have either never been translated into English before or were previously unavailable in modern editions. Each set of essays is preceded by a translator's introduction that outlines the historical and literary background. Taken together, these short but useful articles provide much of the "general narrative context" that the Amazon reviewer says is lacking.

The time frame too is well thought out. The first translated author is the Zurich-based polymath Conrad Gessner (1516-65), whose writings about Mt. Pilatus refute the myth that mountains were neglected as a subject for study and enjoyment before the eighteenth century. He’s been translated before, but this lively new version helps to underscore that Gessner was the true originator of “Type Two fun”:

“But walking itself and weariness are unpleasant; there is also danger in the difficulty of high places and precipitous drops; the comforts of food and bed are wanting.” Say all this is so, but it will be a joy afterward to remember these labors and risks, and to turn these things over in the mind and recount them to friends.

And so we proceed via Johan Jakob Scheuchzer’s “Natural History of Switzerland” (1716) to travel diaries by Sophie von La Roche (1787) and G W F Hegel (1796), and so on to Alexander von Humboldt (1802) and Hermann von Barth, the summit-bagging pioneer of the Karwendel range (1874). Next comes the above-mentioned Georg Simmel (essays from 1895 and 1911), who probably climbed few mountains or none, but ably summed up at least a century’s worth of thinking about them. 

Thanks to the convincing selection of authors, readers can map the way that mountains morphed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into objects of the Romantic sublime on the one hand, and into “vertical laboratories” for the academicians on the other. As a venture in cultural history, therefore, this book fills a gap in English-language mountain libraries. It really is quite useful if one can look past the steep asking price. 

Moving into the twentieth century, the editors’ selection of texts begins to raise some questions. Eduard Pichl’s “Autobiographical Sketch” (1914) and “The Alpine Association and German Purity” (1923) are surely a logical place to start an overview of this troubled era – at the least, these essays show where the rot set in.

But one could query whether Leni Riefenstahl’s “Struggle in Snow and Ice” (1933) sheds light on anything much except Riefenstahl’s alpine-sized ego. Deeper insights into that dangerous nexus of nationalism and mountaineering might have been drawn from the writings of the alpinists Paul Bauer or Luis Trenker, neither of whom makes the cut. Even without these myrmidons of mountaineering, though, the editors have adequately documented the era they lived in.

Standing in for the postwar period is Reinhold Messner, who has published his own idea of what a mountain anthology should include. His essay “Westwall: The Abyss Principle” (2009) records a climb on a rapidly disintegrating face of the Ortler. This essay too is well chosen: at times, Messner could be speaking for almost any contemporary alpine climber:

The high afternoon sun briefly lights up the ice wall above me and my fear increases. Global warming and strong sunshine – it’s hard to stomach! If I could only pass on this experience! But what good would it do to convince people that the glaciers are dwindling? They are not afraid….

As the above-quoted Amazon reviewer suggests, Mountains and the German Mind is inevitably a heavier read than Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind. But then again, it was designed to be – here we have scholarly translations of the original texts rather than a synopsis. Readers are left to draw their own conclusions. Ideally, one should read both books – Macfarlane for British viewpoints, Ireton and Schaumann's compilation for those from a different language and culture.

Speaking of which, English-speakers could benefit from similar collections selected from several other mountaineering cultures. If such anthologies existed, they would broaden our horizons, just as Mountains and the German Mind has. What about France, for a start? Or Poland? Or Slovenia? Or Italy?

I’m sorry that the Amazon reviewer was disappointed with her purchase, yet also a bit surprised. At the same time, I find myself wondering if she might she one day consider putting together a Mountains and the Italian Mind? If she does, Project Hyakumeizan will be the first to review it.

A meizanologist's diary (140)

18 August: We’re all for intense intercultural encounters, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Especially so early in the morning.

Wholesome as it is, the hut’s breakfast comes without our habitual cup of coffee. So we vow to make good this caffeine deficit later in the morning, when we pass through Murodō, the hut complex underneath Hakusan’s triple summit.

Following a “cold start”, progress is inevitably slow. At 7 am or so, we set out across a prairie of sasa, its broad leaves shedding their burden of dew onto our clothes as we brush through. The Sensei has decided on the long way up to Hakusan’s main peak, via the Tembō (viewpoint) course.

It is a fresh, cool morning. A sign points us towards the “Arupus Observatory”, bringing to mind a large dome housing an outsize telescope. Sounds good. Might it even have a vending machine with canned coffee, I wonder…?

Such hopes are soon dashed. The “Observatory” turns out to be a small patch of level ground with a panorama table on a stone plinth – exactly the kind of furnishing that the Hyakumeizan author repeatedly excoriated. Although he might have moderated his stance in this case. For a truly magnificent panorama faces us, floating out there on a sea of silvery mist. And any visitor would want to know which mountain is which.

Our eyes track northwards over the island hulks of Ontake and Norikura, the former distinguishing itself by the twin jets of steam still rising from its southern ridgeline. Then over the Hodaka massif, the great cutout of the Dai-Kiretto, the pimple of Yari and the rugged piles of Tsurugi and Tateyama. Over there somewhere is a peak called Ōnanji, rhyming with the one we’re heading for on Hakusan. And this is not the only place name shared by the two sacred mountains...

Having already seen this vista several times, the Sensei has started on up the ridge before I can finish downloading the scene into my weatherbeaten Nikon. Ah yes, now it comes back to me. We were hurrying to reach Murodō before anybody slips into hypo-caffeinia…

The ridge takes us up onto a broad tableland, through which a stony path weaves between clumps of creeping pine. The scenery is about to become monotonous when the Sensei waves me over to a flat stone. The upper surface is crowded with motionless grasshoppers, who show no sign of concern that the heads of two humans are bent closely over them.

We wait a few minutes, but the entranced insects give no sign as to why they have convened here, well above two thousand metres – whether to meet, mate, greet or eat each other. We walk on having failed to solve another of this Meizan’s manifold mysteries…

Arriving at the hut complex of Murodō, we walk straight into the vestibule. Behind the counter is a sign telling us that today’s coffee is Nicaraguan. This looks promising. The attendant picks up an insulated pot and pours a life-restoring black stream into two paper cups, which we take to a table outside. Ah, the very aroma is invigorating. As for the taste, that would be balanced and smooth, with a mild, clean acidity, hinting at citrus or apple, with subtle undertones of vanilla or spice…

Enough already: it’s clear that coffee reviews are best left to bloggers who actually know what they’re talking about. Suffice it to say, that for a 500 yen a cup, the Murodō serves a brew that wouldn’t go down amiss in one of those high-collar Ginza or Umeda coffee establishments.

Thus fortified, we set out again and tackle the zig-zag path up to Hakusan’s okumiya (inner sanctuary) on the main summit of Gozenpō. 

Although the spot height of 2,702 metres remains officially unchanged, the summit seems to drift higher with each of our visits. Clouds have meanwhile rolled over the Northern Alps and a few outriders from the main pack are starting to waft our way.

As Gozenpō is lively with visitors, we carry on along the ridge, before descending towards Midori-ga-ike. 

The crater lake has kept its usual viridian hue, but the fierce summer heat has dried up most of the smaller ponds within the old craters. 

As we slip through the shadow of a giant block of congealed lava, the Sensei observes that its horizontal striations look just like the marks left by a glacier. Or were they etched into the lava when it was extruded from some long-buried vent? And when was that? So many questions...

Votaries of Ōnanji, Hakusan’s northern peak, have to work a bit harder than those of Gozenpō. No manicured path leads to its summit. We scramble up a dusty ridge, occasionally putting hand to rock. Just as we arrive on top, an outriding cloud starts to spill over the flat summit from the east. 

We pass by a sturdy stone revetment, complete with a doglegged approach path. Hidden within it lurks the summit shrine. Winter must be a blast up here. We carry on to a small refuge hut, and sit down to lunch in the shelter of a rocky sill. From our island in the sky, we can see all the way to the coast, an unusual privilege for a summer afternoon. Soon enough, more clouds come in to take away the view.

A meizanologist's diary (139)

17 August: You can run, you may drive, but you can’t hide - from the summer heat, that is. At 6am in the Ichinose car park, at 830 metres above sea level, the air feels cool as we pull on our mountain boots. But the humidity has us sweating as soon as we start towards Chiburi-one, the ridge route up to Bessan, Hakusan’s “separate mountain”.

According to a book on Japan’s hundred most famous forests, here is as rich and varied a panoply of trees as you will see anywhere in the realm. Yet the lower woods are dark under their summer foliage and, besides, the hornets droning by dissuade us from hanging about. The Sensei says to ignore them. I do my best. Must admit, I find them even scarier than the b-word....

With relief, we leave the giant horse-chestnuts, oaks and katsura behind – it is probably safer to appreciate them at greater leisure later in the year – and we climb gradually into the clerestory of the beechwoods.

The sun has risen over the ridge, backlighting swarms of miniature dragonflies as they weave to and fro. A gap in the trees show us that the clouds have already started to drift up and around Hakusan. 

Perched on grass stems in front of us are three dragonflies, large enough to have flown straight out of the Carboniferous. They seem to be admiring the view too.

Coming up to the refuge hut at 1,900 metres, the path weaves its way through thickets of ōshirabiso trees (Abies mariesii), many surmounted with fresh clusters of blue cones. A fragrance wafts from the trees, reminding me of early morning starts in midsummer at Kamikochi. 

We take a break in the hut’s shade, not forgetting to admire the first alpine flowers of the day, a scattering of matsumushi-sō (Scabiosa japonica).

Bessan, at 2,399 metres, is just high enough to be crowned with creeping pine, with its bright green cones. Lunch, taken in the shadow of the summit shrine’s retaining wall, consists of onigiri from an all-night Lawson outlet. 

Thus fortified, we start out on the ridge traverse towards Hakusan. The path soon takes us through a meadow of Hakusan bofu. This giant parsley-like plant seems to be favoured by an insect that looks like a wasp but probably isn’t.

Further on, the Sensei points out a colony of Hakusan kozakura – which would have turned the slope into a shimmering sheet of purple earlier in the summer, although the flowers are now over.

This sets me wondering how many flowers have “Hakusan” in their name. It turns out that the answer might be more than twenty (depending on whom you ask), thus leaving the runner-up, Rishiri – about eighteen – some way behind. Ibuki lags in third place with a mere dozen. I think of making this observation to the Sensei, but she would probably find it otiose. The San-Reizan (Three Sacred Mountains), of which Hakusan is one, do not stoop to vulgar comparisons. They simply preside over the rest…

Bessan, the savants say, really is a separate mountain – unlike Hakusan’s volcanic crown, it is made up of sedimentary rocks. At the midpoint of the ridge, these seem to be crumbling into the depths, taking stretches of the old path with them. We pay a bit more attention to our footwork here, rewarding ourselves later with a break beside a mountain tarn where the ridge widens again.

Before long, the Nanryū Hut comes into view, sitting on its plateau just beyond the gully dividing Hakusan from the junction ridge to Bessan. 

Altogether, says the Sensei’s navigation app, we’ve climbed 1,782 vertical metres today – which is quite enough for folk of our vintage. With an hour or so to while away before supper, there is time to sample the hut’s excellent library of Hakusan-related literature.

The books on offer come up with one surprise. I’d thought that Hakusan had been dormant since its last eruption in the second year of Manji (1659), but this is to reckon without the “anomaly” (ihen) of Shōwa 10. In March 1935, tall pillars of steam started jetting from a point about two kilometres from the summit. Earth tremors were felt in a village at the mountain’s foot.

Report on the 1935 Hakusan "anomaly" in the Hokkoku Shimbun.

Some feared that the disturbance heralded another major eruption but a local geologist thought otherwise. The fumaroles were more likely caused by recent torrential rainfall, bringing groundwater into contact with hot rocks. And the mountain consented to agree with him. Since then Hakusan has settled back into its habitual somnolence, except for the occasional seismic murmuring.

We are summoned to dinner by a public announcement over the hut’s loudspeakers. 

Looking out from our table over the peaceful verdure of the Nanryū plateau, one would never suspect that this mountain could blast steam jets a hundred metres up into the winter sky. Well, there are more things in this Meizan than are dreamt of in our philosophy. How will it surprise us next…?

Appropriating the Alps

How Japan got its local alpine ranges – and why some are for real.

On the way down from climbing Ishizuchi-san in mid-March, I happened on a faded sign about the mountain’s climbing history. As in the case of so many other Japanese peaks, the first ascent is ascribed to the semi-legendary mountain mystic En no Ozunu. This was back in the seventh century. Countless pilgrims have followed him since and the sound of their conches still re-echoes over the mountain paths in the summer months.

Mountaineers of the 1920s in the Shirouma snow valley.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

Modern mountaineering started during the 1920s, when an inspirational teacher by the name of Kitagawa Jun’ichirō formed a “travel club” at Shikoku’s Matsuyama High School. For “travel”, one may read “mountaineering”.

On Jonen-dake in the 1920s.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

In 1925, Kitagawa-sensei upped the ante by publishing his collected mountain writings under the title of Shikoku Alps (Shikoku Arupusu). This was just fifteen years after Kojima Usui, the main mover and shaker behind the Japanese Alpine Club, had conferred the title of “Japan Alps” on the central ranges of Honshū.

The Ushiro-Tateyama range.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

On the face of it, Kitagawa had staked a bold claim. While some peaks in Honshū’s Hida and Akaishi ranges do exceed three thousand metres – and Mt Fuji would rank around twenty-eighth among the major summits if set down among Switzerland’s Bernese Alps – no part of Shikoku exceeds even two kilometres above sea level.

On the other hand, he had picked the perfect moment to award the alpine brevet to Shikoku’s modest peaks. Historians could light on 1925 as the meridian year of what they call “Taishō Democracy”, implying an unusual openness to newfangled and foreign concepts. And, whether or not by chance, promoting local mountain ranges as “Alps” also reached its apogee around then.

The Kurobe gorge.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

By coincidence, Gakujin, Japan’s second oldest mountaineering magazine, dedicated its March 2026 edition to exploring these local “Alps”. In the introductory article, Katō Yoshiki writes that the habit of “mitate” – here defined as comparing a local beauty spot with a prestigious foreign equivalent – goes back far into Japan’s past.

Lake Biwa’s famous Eight Views of Omi, for example, channel the even more famous Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a classic theme in Chinese poetry and landscape painting from the eleventh-century Song dynasty. A similar logic sits behind Japan’s local “Mt Fujis”, whether or not they particularly resemble their great original.

Mountaineer on Myojin-dake, 1920s.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

Arrogating the Alps to Japan was a bit different, historically speaking. An English mining engineer was the first to make the comparison, writing it up in a guidebook for foreigners. Then Walter Weston, a mountaineering missionary, picked it up in the titles of his first and second books about the Japanese mountains.

But few Japanese had read these foreign-language books at the time. So it was only in 1910, when Kojima Usui decided to call his collected writings “Nihon Arupusu”, at the urging of his publisher, who was looking for a grabby title, that most of his compatriots realised that they had their own Alps on the doorstep.

On Tsubakuro-dake in the 1920s.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

There were, of course, objections. In the end, though, people picked up the alpine “mitate” and ran with it. The first of the regional alps might have been those coined by the Japanese Alpine Club members Nakamura Seitarō and Saegusa Inosuke when they described their traverse of the “Etchū Alps” in a 1911 issue of their club’s journal. But these Alps centred on Tateyama and were thus part of what would soon be accepted as the Northern Alps.

It was in the Taishō era (1912–1926) that the regional alps really started to proliferate. Quite soon, people were talking about the Yamato Alps (the Ōmine mountains), the Tohoku Alps (mainly the Asahi range, but also Iide and Zao), and the Kyūshū Alps (mainly the Kujū Mountains, but also Aso).

Snow gully on Tsurugi.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

In 1927, the soon-to-be famous solo climber Katō Buntarō went one step further. When he made his first winter forays into his local mountains, he not only rebranded them as the “Hyōgo Alps” but renamed their individual peaks after the highest summits in the Japan Northern Alps, thus piling one “mitate” on top of another:

I refer to the mountain range along the border of Hyōgo, Tottori and Okayama prefectures as the Hyōgo Alps. I rename Mount Mizunoyama (1,500 meters above sea level) as Hyōgo-Yari, Mount Mimuroyama as Hyogo-Norikura, and the southernmost mountain at 1,344.6 meters as Hyōgo-Ontake. Since the summit of Mount Hyōnosen is entirely within Tottori Prefecture, I've decided to call the mountain in front of it Hyōgo-Tateyama. I'm not entirely sure of the exact height of this Tateyama, but it's probably around 1,280 meters…

Winter on Norikura.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

Foreigners too got back into the game. In their journal Inaka, published between 1915 and 1920, the mainly gaijin members of the Mountain Goats of Kobe referred to their local “Kobe Alps”, although probably with tongue in cheek.

On similar lines, a 1924 guidebook from the “Kinki Mountaineering Research Association” introduces not only the Kobe Alps, but also the Rokkō Alps (here referring to a spur ridge off the Jigokudani East Ridge) and the Suma Alps. The book also lists the Yamato Alps, the Hiei Alps, the Kōnan Alps and the Taki Alps. The Nikkō Alps and the Kubiki Alps emerged at around the same time.

On the way to Otensho-dake, 1920s.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

Soon, and without apparent irony, even the lowly Kamakura hills were to acquire alpine status, although none top two hundred metres. This deficiency didn’t stop Fukada Kyūya, the emerging mountain writer, from writing a guide to them for the magazines Modern Sports and Fujin no Tomo in 1934. At the time, there was even a signpost pointing to the “Kamakura Alps” outside his house.

By 1937, though, Fukada was having second thoughts: “I used to think that calling them [the Kamakura hills] the Alps was incomparably twee,” he wrote in an essay on mountain views, “but these days I'm starting to feel this frivolous imitation is unacceptable”. Nevertheless, that same year, his friend Kawabata Yasunari, a fellow member of the so-called Kamakura literati, wrote an article about a hill walk for the Osaka Asahi Shinbun – under the title of “The Kamakura Alps”.

Shirouma in the snow season.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

So when it comes to the Shikoku Alps, it’s no surprise to learn that Kitagawa Junichirō was not the first to arrogate them. According to Gakujin, the haiku poet, journalist, calligrapher, art critic, noh dancer and mountaineer Kawahigashi Hekigotō referred to them as early as 1915. This was in a book on mountain landscapes, in which he lamented that "the name 'Alps' has gradually come to be abused, so that the Ishizuchi mountain range has been called the 'Shikoku Alps', and the Rikuzen-Iwaki mountains the ‘Abukuma Alps’.”

Fast-forwarding to the present day, we can see that Kawahigashi was right to be concerned. Drawing on both official and unofficial sources, Gakujin has written up no fewer than fifty local “Alps” in its March 2026 edition. These range from the О̄shū Alps up in Iwate to the Kankai Alps down in Kumamoto. Only in Hokkaido could no local Alps be found – and, of course, in the Shin’etsu, given that this region is already chokka with the original Northern Alps.

Such is the profusion of local Alps in Japan – the Gakujin editors say there might be more than a hundred in total – that some fundamental questions arise. Such as what qualifies as an alp in the first place. If you go back to the original Latin word “alpēs”, etymologists like to derive it from the adjective “albus”, meaning white with snow, or perhaps from an older pre-Latin root word for “mountain”.

But that is not how the word was traditionally used in the modern Europe languages. Whether in the French “Alpe”, the German “Alp” or the dialect “Alm”, the meaning traditionally indicated a high summer pasture for sheep, goats or cows. I was reminded of this back in March when we climbed a local Echizen mountain with no alpine pretensions at all.

Looking over a connecting ridge to the attractively snowed-up bulk of Echizen’s Heko-san, the Sensei observed that on the other side of this mountain a road leads almost to the summit. And that, in summer, the cattle are driven up there to pasture for as long as the grass stays sweet. Well, that is the very definition of a traditional alp.

Camping at Kamikochi in the 1920s.
Illustration from Nihon Arupusu.

Come to think about it, even Kamikōchi, the gateway to the Northern Japan Alps, was once an alp. According to Professor Fynn Holm, its flat valley floor served to pasture up to four hundred cattle for about half a century. The ranch was closed in 1934, partly because the overly aggressive bulls kept charging the tourists – Walter Weston and his wife Frances were among those who had narrow escapes, along with their guide Kamijō Kamonji.

So it’s true. Japan absolutely does have real Alps. If you want to find them, just follow the cows.

References

Katō Yoshiki, “Nihon Arupusu to go-tōchi no arupusu” (“The Japan Alps and the local alps)”, Gakujin, no 945, March 2026.

Fynn Holm, “Uniquely Japan, Uniquely Alpine: The Transformation of the Kamikōchi Mountain Valley into an Alpine Landscape, 1892–1938”, Environmental History, January 2023.

Katō Buntarō, “Hyōgo Tateyama tozan” in Tandokkō (Solo climbs), Sangaku Meicho Series, Futami Shobō, September 1970.

Illustrations are from Nihon Arupusu, edited by Nakama Teruhisa, with contributions by various members of the Japanese Alpine Club, Shinkōsha, Tokyo, June 1930. For the provenance of this copy, see A meizanologist’s diary (44).