A meizanologist's diary (85)

20 November: less than an hour after starting from the Kamoshika taxi’s drop zone at Kōbara (God’s Field), I reach Sobo-san’s fifth station – this is curious, as on my way up through the factory plantations I don’t recall seeing any first, second, third or fourth stations, such as would befit a self-respecting Meizan with a tradition of pilgrimages. But now the trees are starting to look more like a natural forest, and it’s time to take a break.

As magic potion to Obelix the Gaul, so Kirin’s Fire One Day Black bottled coffee is to the caffeine-starved hiker. After sinking half of my supply, I set off through the forest with renewed vigour – which is offset by the need to take note of the various signboards educating me about the trees. 

Just above the fifth station, the glossy pink trunk of a camellia-bearing himeshara (Stewartia monadelpha) shows that we are still low down the mountain, climatically speaking.

Soon the path is so deeply mulched in fallen maple leaves (six different varieties, a helpful signboard says), to say nothing of the fallout from the zelkova (keyaki) and oaks (mizunara), that I have to keep looking for the red tapes tied onto branches to stay on track. This mixture of trees is characteristic of Sobo-san’s “intermediate-temperate deciduous broad-leaved forest”, as defined by Oita University's Professor Suzuki Tokihiro.

Gaining a ridge, we enter a conifer grove, probably of tsuga (Japanese hemlock). A rock outcrop forces the path to zigzag, and a signboard warns hikers about the “zeppeki” (sheer cliff). The language seems a bit overdone but, then again, Bre’er Ben over on Meizan Memories warns that a hiker slipped on one of Sobo’s normal routes on a winter day and died of exposure before anyone found him. So have a bit of extra care here, friends.

As the morning light starts to graze the nearby ridges, we reach the beechwoods – this must be above 1,100 metres now, as the cool-loving trees won’t grow any lower in these southern climes. Then the trees thin out as the path leads into a clearing surveyed by a solitary red-bibbed jizō on its far side. Judging by the expansive view, this must be See-the-Country Pass or Kunimi-tōge (1,480 metres). Two or three other hikers are taking a break here.

I push onwards into a low-ceilinged wood, its stunted and twisted trees suggesting that we’ve moved up into yet another climatic zone. Frost pillars glitter in the slanting sunlight, and a shaded gully still harbours a patch of early-season snow. 

My, so far south, and there seems to be more snow here than on Mt Fuji right now.

I follow two lady hikers onto the bare summit. “Yabeh!” (bad!) says the one with orange-tinted hair as she takes in the view. Bad is right: the air is so crystalline today that it would be criminal to neglect the panorama that opens up on all sides.

Fukada Kyūya had similar luck with the weather: “Under a cloudless sky,” the Hyakumeizan author wrote, “I spent a happy hour in the warm sun counting off all the mountains around. There to the west was Aso, the skirts of its outer bastions stretching off towards Kujū-san, these vast fields extending almost as far as the eye could see. And standing at the corners of this space, like the legs of a tripod, were Aso, Kujū and Sobo.”

Taking a leaf from Fukada’s book, I document the views with my weatherbeaten Nikon. We can actually see from one side of Kyushu to the other today. 

The summit shrine too deserves attention. It looks centuries older than the wooden fanes that typically adorn a Japanese mountaintop. Unlike them, it consists of stone slabs, roughly clenched together. There’s no knowing how many centuries it has stood there, but the guidebook says that the god enshrined there is mentioned in the eighth-century Shoku Nihongi. This must be a Meizan with a very lengthy tradition.

If so, why does Sobo-san have such an effete name – it means “grandmother’s peak” – when its dragon-manifesting guardian deity is so obviously masculine? The question is raised in the booklet accompanying my Yama to Kōgen map. One thesis, it says, is that “Sobo” is a corruption of an older name – “Sohori-no-yama” – which in turn derived from a Korean term meaning “place with a god”. If so, the mountain’s name would be kith and kin to that of modern-day Seoul.

I sit down behind a boulder out of the wind while I munch on one of the Sensei’s sweet potatoes, wash it down with the rest of the Fire One Day Black, and consult the map. It’s not yet eleven o’clock: too early to go down yet. Fukada had the right idea: he traversed Sobo-san, went down to the old mining village of Obira “enjoying on the way a splendid view of Sobo’s east flank, a corrie-like valley walled in by cliffs that rise out of dense primeval forest.” 

And on the next day, the Hyakumeizan author and his local guide climbed Katamuki-yama, the rugged ridge rising to the east. This is surely the correct way to appreciate a Meizan, turning it on all sides as you would an antique tea bowl….

For a moment, I consider a recklessly extended one-day hike across the mountains until I run out of daylight. Two voices war within my soul: you’ve got a head-torch whispers Mubō-kun, perhaps fired up by an overdose of One Day Black, and surely the weather’s going to hold – that is, if we tune out the lenticular cloud that’s just materialised over Katamuki-yama. Hey, objects Captain Majime, you told the efficient and courteous Kamoshika taxi driver you’d be back at Kōbara by 3.15 pm…

Captain Majime and Mubō-kun negotiate a compromise. I will drop down the peak’s southern side, just to take a look you understand. Curiously, no helpful sign identifies the way to go, and I have to check the direction with another hiker. 

The path heads down a rake of loose stones, and I soon find myself above another zeppeki. This one is for real, and I’m happy to grab the fixed nylon ropes while clambering down it.

Then a series of ladders plumb the depths of a shady gully. At last we reach the ridge below. The path that leads southwards is less trodden than the trade route up from Kōbara. It’s clear that I’m not going to get very far today if the taxi rendezvous is to be respected. So, reaching a viewpoint above the trees, I turn to look back at Sobo-san.

From this side, the mountain has changed its character as profoundly as any Jekyll and Hyde. Instead of the modestly angled parkland that greets climbers from the north, a rocky fist of volcanic rock punches upwards from the brushwood. And the peak seems to frown as cloud shadows start drifting across it. Now it really is time to turn back.