Even their greatest fans tend to apologise for them: And so we bade our farewell to the Alps of Japan. They do not, it is true, display the glories of glacier-shrouded peaks, and the scale on which they are built is only two-thirds that of the famous Alps of Switzerland, wrote Walter Weston, the mountaineering missionary.
Is it really necessary to relativise Japan’s mountains? Fukada Kyuya, the Hyakumeizan author, didn’t think so. Mountains were the bedrock of the Japanese soul: “Japan is a mountainous country. Mountains are everywhere,” he wrote. Well, you can’t argue with that. Of the country’s 47 prefectures, circuits, or major cities, only three – Chiba, Kyoto and Okinawa – lack mountains that rise above 1,000 metres. When it comes to quantity, Japan occupies the high ground.
The high ground is there because Japan sits on the junction of three tectonic plates. Its mountains are still rising fast. Parts of the Japanese Southern Alps gain 5 millimetres a year, which sums to a lofty 5,000 metres every million years – a Mt Blanc and then some. This growth rate leaves the Swiss Alps in the dust – they manage a mere millimetre or so a year – and puts the Japan Alps in the same league as the ranges of Taiwan and New Zealand, which grow at up to 10 or so millimetres a year.How come, sceptics might ask, that we don’t see any actual Mt Blancs rising above Kofu or Matsumoto? Well, that’s because of the prodigious rates of erosion in those parts, explains Professor Koaze Takashi in his book, Yama wo yomu (Reading mountains). As the chart below shows, Japan’s mountains are being washed into the sea twice as fast as the Himalaya. You could say that erosion plays Godzilla to uplift’s Mothra.
Just as in a Godzilla film, the scenery is considerably reshaped by this struggle. As a result, the Kurobe gorge plunges proportionately deeper and narrower than its equivalents in the European Alps or the Himalaya, says Professor Koaze. The walls of Japanese river ravines may be lower, but they concede nothing in sheerness to the canyons of the greater ranges.
In fact, Walter Weston saw that for himself. After acknowledging their modest height, he continues his farewell to the Japanese Alps as follows: But the picturesqueness of their valleys, and the magnificence of the dark and silent forests that clothe their massive flanks, surpass anything I have met with in European Alpine wanderings.
References
Yama wo yomu by Koaze Takashi, Professor of Geography at Meiji University. Charts from Koaze op cit; cartoon courtesy of Yama to Keikoku magazine.
11 comments:
Nice one Martin, it's great to hear these words in defence of Japan's mountains.
Anyone who has put the time into exploring and climbing them knows that what they lack in vertical stature they more than make up for in other ways (character, beauty, trouser-filling moments on unprotected near-vertical grass slopes in summer and snow slopes in winter, 50-year old ring bolts that look like they wouldn't hold a carton of milk dropped from a modest height, the first-class autumn colours etc...). I for one will never forget the times I've had in the mountains over here...
The claustrophobia that looking up from the bottom of Ichi-no-kura-sawa can produce in a person on a cold inhospitable morning stays with you... and amplifies the joy of topping out on the summit ridge, space and views instantly replacing doubt and introspection...
On a separate but related note, I sometimes get a little bored explaining to people that there is world-class rock-climbing and winter climbing in Britain... It seems that 'altitude' equates to difficulty and adventure in the popular mind, and few who haven't been there can imagine the existence of vertical precipices on a mountain like Snowdon... understandable perhaps when you consider that it's only just higher than Mitake-san... but tiresome nonetheless.
Happy New Year to you. Climb safe...
Tony
I forgot to say, thanks a lot for the first-class articles you're giving us all on this blog. It's so good to read such beautiful well-researched and referenced writing about the Japanese mountains.
Tony
Tony said very nicely what I've wanted to say. Yes, I have always thought of it as a privilege that I get to read Project Hyakumeizan's first-class articles here. Thank you very much, Project Hyakumeizan. It's a pity not all the people who would love to read them know their existence. I hope the reputation spreads by word of mouth, and more people will get to read them.
As a Japanese, I'm glad to know that there are good reasons for the Japanese mountains' picturesqueness and magnificence. But I feel a bit worried about the rates of erosion. Not only the natural erosion but also the plantation of conifers, the succeeding farmers' abandonment of the forests, disappearance of undergrowth by overgrowing deer and wild boars are accelrating the process of mountains being washed away, especially by the downpours that seem to have been happening more frequently these days. I hope we can keep this beautiful nature forever...
What a lovely tribute to the beauty and splendour of the Japanese mountains! THey may not be the highest, but they can still exact the most from a walker who comes from more lofty slopes. When I walked the Tour du Mont Blanc in 2007 I was surprised by how "tame" the mountains were, compared to Japan's. I found it much harder to get an experience of "wilderness". The mountains here give me that sense of getting just far enough away from the masses that I can rely on myself and immerse myself in something bigger than myself.
I agree with sunnybeauty about the erosion here. I no longer climb in the Tanzawa range because the erosion from all the hordes of walkers is so bad and so unchecked that the mountains just can't keep up. If people don't give them a breather the ragged ridges will eventually wash away and there will be no more walking at all.
Thanks so much for this great post!
What surprised me most is "～gain 5millimetres a year, which sums to a lofty 5,000 metres every million years”. I'm wondering what the Japanese archipelago will look like in the distant future. Terrific tectonic uplift! And now I'm worried about what will happen to the small island in the South Pacific Ocean where Mothra's egg hatched.
Mrs I-CJW upon seeing Mont Blanc for the first time:
"Huh, it's nice, but it's no Fuji!"
Chris, I lived at the base of Fuji for five years and it really is a wonderful mountain that I never get tired of, but it certainly isn't that exceptional! Sometimes I think Japanese love things purely because they are in Japan and not because they actually look at what they are seeing. The myth of the "perfect" conical volcano is forever played upon, and yet it isn't true... Fuji has a huge wart on one shoulder that, from the south, distinctly makes the volcano badly assymetrical (which, arguably, is part of the Japanese idea of sabi, I know. But that's not how it is presented to the world.
Agreed Butuki. I'll happily 'big up' the Japanese mountains to anyone, but it probably has to be conceded that to compare them too favourably to the European Alps and Chamonix is pushing the envelope just a bit too far... For all its beauty, I really can't imagine many people getting overly excited about Mt Fuji when faced with the Dru, the Jorasses N Face, or evening alpenglow on the Chamonix Aiguilles...
It's all good though...
Tony
So many comments - how gratifying: I feared that this somewhat factual article might send my last reader sliding, somnolent, under the table. But, instead, all these profound observations.
Tony: yep, the mountains gain immensely in scale when one is belayed off one of those rusty ring bolts. Indeed, you are lucky in some places if the ring is still in the bolt...:)
Sunnybeauty: a profound observation, that the same cause - erosion - that creates the special beauty of these mountains could ravage them in an instant if the woods are destabilised....
Butuki: and, yes, that's another thing, more subjective than the geomorphology. The sense of "wilderness" is far stronger in Japan than in Europe. Look no further than the Kurobe - or even West Tanzawa.
Sapphire: thank for the illuminating nugget about the origins of Mothra. May we read more on your estimable blog one day? Mothra, the prequel...?
Chris: I hesitate to get involved in a Mt Blanc vs Mt Fuji flame war on this page. Anyway, it's quite clear which mountain will win a flame war...
Butuki again: but tea bowls are always more valuable when cracked...
Oh I didn't know you like "Kaijyu" movies. I'm not sure if I'll be able to write about Mothra well but I'll post something about her probably in February.
Sapphire: I look forward to the Mothra post. Already I have learned something - that Mothra is a "she" and not a "he". Clearly in the genre of great female monsters, such as Tolkien's Shelob and Grendel's Mother (a "Momster", so to speak...)
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