How a cultural warrior inspired climbers to explore the Greater Ranges
Conveniently for mountain historians, it was in 1900 that a Waseda professor finished translating Marie de Ujfalvy-Bourdon’s Voyage D'une Parisienne Dans L'himalaya Occidental, the first book on the Himalaya ever to be published in Japan.
 |
| Climbers on the summit ridge of Nanda Kot, 1936 |
Strictly speaking, nobody in Japan needed Mme de Ujfalvy-Bourdon to learn of these great mountains – they’d been there for centuries, shimmering in the awareness of monks and scholars. And as soon as ordinary folk could travel abroad, it was a monk who was among the first to translate such vague aspirations into action. Indeed, Kawaguchi Ekai (1866-1945) was already well on his way to Lhasa when the Japanese version of the Frenchwoman’s book came out.
More than most, Kanokogi (right) was a bundle of paradoxes. During the war with Russia, as a young naval officer and a practising Christian, he is said to have stopped his vessel, against orders, to rescue shipwrecked sailors from the enemy fleet. Later he renounced Christianity and signed up with the Yūzonsha, an ultra-nationalist group and a pulpit from which he inveighed against liberalism, democracy and individualism.
After his naval service, Kanokogi launched into an academic career, studying philosophy at Kyoto, then Columbia, where he wrote a master’s thesis on Nietzsche (1910), and finally Jena in Germany, where he married the German-Polish daughter of a philologist and wrote up a doctoral thesis on the philosophy of religion (1912) – you can still buy a reprint of this book today. By the time the First World War broke out, he was back in Tokyo teaching philosophy at Keio.
Along the way, the young philosopher had picked up a good knowledge of the Alps. In 1911, he’d set out from Jena on a walking tour of the usual Swiss tourist spots, distilling these experiences into a book entitled Alpine Travels (アルプス行). This recommended him to Maki "Yūkō" Aritsune, who signed him up as a kind of advisor or elder to the mountaineering club he was founding at Keio in 1915. As to where alpinism fitted into Kanokogi’s broad range of interests, a professor who has studied his thought says that
After his naval service, Kanokogi launched into an academic career, studying philosophy at Kyoto, then Columbia, where he wrote a master’s thesis on Nietzsche (1910), and finally Jena in Germany, where he married the German-Polish daughter of a philologist and wrote up a doctoral thesis on the philosophy of religion (1912) – you can still buy a reprint of this book today. By the time the First World War broke out, he was back in Tokyo teaching philosophy at Keio.
Along the way, the young philosopher had picked up a good knowledge of the Alps. In 1911, he’d set out from Jena on a walking tour of the usual Swiss tourist spots, distilling these experiences into a book entitled Alpine Travels (アルプス行). This recommended him to Maki "Yūkō" Aritsune, who signed him up as a kind of advisor or elder to the mountaineering club he was founding at Keio in 1915. As to where alpinism fitted into Kanokogi’s broad range of interests, a professor who has studied his thought says that
Kanokogi found respite from his anxieties concerning Japanese society in his frequent mountain-climbing expeditions. Yet even those escapes were related to his political outlook, for his love of the mountains, which he acquired in Germany, was inspired by a Nietzschean quest for enlightenment upon craggy peaks. Other German influences were also at play: contact with nature held an important role in volkisch thought, a hodgepodge of romanticism and nationalism that contributed to Nazi ideology. Kanokogi considered the mountains an appropriate environment to hone the qualities necessary in the future leaders of his totalitarian state. It was thus to prepare a generation of students for service as philosopher-kings that he founded alpinist clubs at Keio and at Tokyo Imperial University.
In 1918, Kanokogi resigned from Tokyo University, where he'd also helped to found a mounaineering club, and travelled to India. Given a miserly 15 day permit to visit the Kanchenjunga region, he managed to climb a minor peak of 4,810 metres – the first Himalayan ascent by any Japanese citizen. Then, before he could get in touch with Indian pro-independence activists – another purpose of his journey – he was arrested by the British authorities and deported back to Japan. Nevertheless, he’d shown young mountaineers that Himalayan peaks could be reached and climbed.
 |
| View of Nanda Kot, from the 1936 expedition |
One who got Kanokogi’s message – at least, the mountaineering part – was Mita Yukio (1900-1991). As a founder member of the Keio mountaineering club, he joined Maki in pioneering winter climbing and ski mountaineering – indeed, it was Mita who skied through a blizzard to Tateyama Onsen to raise the alarm after Maki’s party got into trouble in January 1923.
Despite this tragedy, which resulted in the death of Itakura Katsunobu, Maki saw these excursions as training for the Greater Ranges: after his return from the Mittelegi Ridge in 1921 he visited Yamamoto Isoroku, soon to become famous as a proponent of naval air power, to ask if the oxygen masks used by military aviators might be adapted for Himalayan climbers.
In the summer of 1925, Maki took Mita along with Hayakawa Tanezō and three Swiss guides to make the first ascent of Mt Alberta (3,619m) in the Canadian Rockies. By this time, Mita had graduated from Keio and had decided to join a trading company. He did well in business, ultimately rising to headup the Singapore branch of Iwai Sangyō, a forerunner of Nisshō Iwai and hence today's Sojitz.
Unsurprisingly for an alpinist of his calibre, Mita’s professional success did nothing to dull his Himalayan ambitions. A posting to India put the Himalaya within closer reach and, in the winter of 1931, he got as far as the Rohtang Pass (3,980m) with a party of 13 porters and sirdars. Alas, the weather prevented the planned ascent of a nearby peak of 4,500 metres, which Mita saw as a preliminary to attempting Kanchenjunga. And then his hard-won three weeks of leave were over.
In the end, Mita could do nothing more than look on as expeditions from Europe fanned out into the Himalaya. In 1931 alone, Paul Bauer led his second expedition to Kanchenjunga, and Frank Smythe succeeded on Kamet (7,756 m), the highest peak anybody had so far climbed. Mita reported on these and other expeditions to his colleagues in Japan, exhorting them to train for expeditions in the winter mountains.
Mita’s frustrations were widely shared. In June 1931, three former students of Kyoto’s elite Third High School had set up the Academic Alpine Club of Kyoto. Their aim was specifically to climb in the Himalaya. To do so, they first had to master a new set of techniques – setting climbing camps progressively higher up the mountain until the summit was in reach. The AACK first tested this “polar method” on Mt Fuji over the 1931 year-end. But after Japan left the League of Nations two years later, the country’s growing international isolation got in the way of everybody’s Himalayan ambitions.
In the end, it was neither the AACK, nor Mita Yukio, but a Rikkyō University expedition that bagged Nanda Kot in October 1936, helped by an experienced crew of Sherpas led by a veteran sirdar who’d been on both Everest with the British and Kanchenjunga with the Germans. The expedition leader, Hotta Yaichi, had been inspired and encouraged by Hasegawa Denjirō, a furniture designer by appointment to the Imperial court ,who’d gone to view and photograph Mt Kailas and Nanga Parbat in 1927-28. Nanda Kot was Japan’s first and only pre-war Himalayan summit.
After the war, Kanokogi was arrested as a war criminal, spending some months languishing in Sugamo Prison until released on grounds of ill-health. Meanwhile, the members of the AACK were rekindling their Himalayan ambitions. In October 1952, Imanishi Kinji, one of the club’s founders, led a reconnaissance expedition to Manaslu (8,163m). The following year, a party led by Mita Yukio made a serious attempt on the mountain’s northeast face, reaching a height of 7,750 metres. In 1954, yet a third expedition, led by the aforesaid Hotta Yaichi, was blocked by obstructive villagers and diverted to another mountain.
Finally, in 1956, the summit was reached via the mountain’s north side, making Manaslu “Japan’s eight-thousander”. Led by Maki Yūkō, this expedition was organised by the Japanese Alpine Club, like its predecessors, but it was nonetheless an AACK man, Imanishi Toshio (no relation to Imanishi Kinji), who was the first to top out. The academicians had at last made good on their prewar Himalayan dreams.
 |
| Porting loads on Nanda Kot, 1936 |
In the end, Mita could do nothing more than look on as expeditions from Europe fanned out into the Himalaya. In 1931 alone, Paul Bauer led his second expedition to Kanchenjunga, and Frank Smythe succeeded on Kamet (7,756 m), the highest peak anybody had so far climbed. Mita reported on these and other expeditions to his colleagues in Japan, exhorting them to train for expeditions in the winter mountains.
Mita’s frustrations were widely shared. In June 1931, three former students of Kyoto’s elite Third High School had set up the Academic Alpine Club of Kyoto. Their aim was specifically to climb in the Himalaya. To do so, they first had to master a new set of techniques – setting climbing camps progressively higher up the mountain until the summit was in reach. The AACK first tested this “polar method” on Mt Fuji over the 1931 year-end. But after Japan left the League of Nations two years later, the country’s growing international isolation got in the way of everybody’s Himalayan ambitions.
 |
| High on Nanda Kot in 1936 |
In the end, it was neither the AACK, nor Mita Yukio, but a Rikkyō University expedition that bagged Nanda Kot in October 1936, helped by an experienced crew of Sherpas led by a veteran sirdar who’d been on both Everest with the British and Kanchenjunga with the Germans. The expedition leader, Hotta Yaichi, had been inspired and encouraged by Hasegawa Denjirō, a furniture designer by appointment to the Imperial court ,who’d gone to view and photograph Mt Kailas and Nanga Parbat in 1927-28. Nanda Kot was Japan’s first and only pre-war Himalayan summit.
After the war, Kanokogi was arrested as a war criminal, spending some months languishing in Sugamo Prison until released on grounds of ill-health. Meanwhile, the members of the AACK were rekindling their Himalayan ambitions. In October 1952, Imanishi Kinji, one of the club’s founders, led a reconnaissance expedition to Manaslu (8,163m). The following year, a party led by Mita Yukio made a serious attempt on the mountain’s northeast face, reaching a height of 7,750 metres. In 1954, yet a third expedition, led by the aforesaid Hotta Yaichi, was blocked by obstructive villagers and diverted to another mountain.
Finally, in 1956, the summit was reached via the mountain’s north side, making Manaslu “Japan’s eight-thousander”. Led by Maki Yūkō, this expedition was organised by the Japanese Alpine Club, like its predecessors, but it was nonetheless an AACK man, Imanishi Toshio (no relation to Imanishi Kinji), who was the first to top out. The academicians had at last made good on their prewar Himalayan dreams.
References
Yamazaki Yasuji, Nihon Tozan-shi, Hakusui-sha, 1969 reprinted 1975.
Christopher Szpilman, "Kanokogi Kazunobu: Pioneer of Platonic Fascism and Imperial Pan-Asianism", Monumenta Nipponica, vol 68, no 2, 2013.
Hito wa naze yama ni noboru no ka, volume 103, Taiyō Bessatsu: Nihon no kokoro, Heibonsha 1998.
Kinichi Yamamori, "Japanese Mountaineering in the Himalaya before and after World War II", (translated, edited and supplemented by Tom Nakamura), The Himalayan Journal, no 73, 2018.
Hotta Yaichi, "The ascent of Nanda Kot", The Himalayan Journal, no 10, 1938.
Photos of the 1936 Rikkyō University expedition to Nanda Kot are from Yama to Keikoku's Me de miru Nihon no Tozanshi.
No comments:
Post a Comment