A meizanologist's diary (102)

23 March: seen from the van, a red ball sun dips in and out of the eastern hilltops as we scour down Route 8 in S-san’s van. While we wait for our friends at the rendezvous point, newly arrived bank martins flutter overhead. The groves of plum trees nearby have started to shimmer with blossom. Spring has arrived. Those snowshoes we’ve brought just in case will stay tied to our packs.

We’d long wanted to visit Sanjusangenzan – the Mountain of the Thirty-Three Bays – not least on account of its curious name. Can there really be a link between the Hall of the Thirty-Three Bays in Kyoto, famous for its thousand-and-one images of the Kannon-sama, and the eponymous mountain at the other end of Lake Biwa? After raising the question a while back, it was time to seek some ground truth …

Alas, it seems that mountain etymology is not top-of-mind today for our club’s president, who’s just arrived at the carpark. To explain, he came slip-sliding down these very snowslopes just a week or so ago, only to find that one of his crampons had become, like Prometheus, unbound. So our mission today is to reclimb Sanjusangenzan to help search for the missing set of spikes.

We set off through a still leafless wood – leafless, that is, except for the pines and evergreen camellia trees, which are endemic in this “southern march” of our province. At about 500 metres, we take a break alongside, but not too close to, the rotten snag of what was once a husband-and-wife pine tree.

Reaching the snow – it has retreated a long way in two weeks – we spread out in a line like grouse-beaters to see if we can start up the missing irons. At first a spirit of optimism prevails – surely those crampons can’t evade a well-organised search party like ours – but all too soon we come up to the ridgeline, still spikeless.

As if to distract us from our lack of success, a tall pylon rises from the col ahead, festooned with whirling anemometers. This, the Sensei explains, is sniffing the wind for a planned row of power-generating turbines. If they build it, she adds, a whole hecatomb of beech trees will have to be sacrificed. Well, maybe not her exact words, but you get the drift.

For now, the forest seems to be in good shape: we even see a pair of fearsome-looking caterpillars inching their way across the snow. 

The summit is reached through a grove of dog-beeches – their twisted shadows, lying this way and that across the snow, bring some easement to the eyes after the harsh glare of the open ridge.

The summit marker itself is still half-buried. A great tit flutters in a tizzy from branch to branch as we sit down to lunch. As we tuck into our onigiri, S-san, a practitioner of kyūdo, reveals that he goes to Kyoto every year to take part in a ceremony at the Sanjusangendō. So perhaps there is some hidden link between mountain and temple?

All too soon, it’s time to descend. Distant views of Hakusan do not distract us as we walk down the softening afternoon snow. Indeed, there are no views to distract us at all: kosa, the yellow haze drifting in from the continent, has smothered them all. That may be just as well though: we still have that crampon to find….

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22 March: the early Kagayaki sweeps us past a snowy Mt Asama and into town by midmorning. 

At 11am, we climb the stone steps to the temple of Gokokuji in Bunkyō-ku, walk past the main hall into the cemetery and find a small group of friends in front of the monument to Nonaka Itaru and Chiyoko – whose bold attempt to overwinter on the summit of Mt Fuji in 1895 paved the way for a permanent weather station there.

Falling from a clear blue sky, the spring sunlight brings out every lineament in the gravestone’s bronze relief. 

Garbed in their parkas lined with Russian fur, the young couple look every bit as resolute as they did in October 1895, when settling in for their two-month ordeal atop Japan’s highest mountain.

Laconic as it is, the plaque under the bronze relief explains why we are here. Itaru passed away at the age of eighty-seven in February 1955. So we are paying our respects just a few weeks after his seventieth anniversary. Our group comprises members of the “Fuyō Nikki no Kai”, a study association dedicated to researching the Nonakas’ story.

The Nonaka Observatory of 1895.
Illustration from Itaru's brochure of 1900.

Over the past few years, many more details of that history have come to light. Most fictional accounts of Itaru’s project – particularly the novel by Nitta Jirō and any films based on it – end with the couple’s  rescue from their blizzard-wracked hut on Mt Fuji in late December 1895.

For Itaru, however, this was merely a beginning. While Chiyoko was publishing her Fuyō Nikki (Journal of the Lotus), a lively account of the couple’s mountaintop experiences, Itaru started work on a series of articles for Chigaku Zasshi, a geographical journal, explaining his scientific aims and setting out his weather observations. These were published in the second half of 1896.

And then he went back to Mt Fuji, climbing to the summit in three consecutive summers, those of 1896, 1897 and 1898. His aim was to scope out the site for a bigger and better weather station – one that would house a large enough team to support year-round weather observations.

Design for a new Mt Fuji weather station.
From Itaru's brochure of 1900.

The best place for a new observatory, Itaru decided, would not be on Ken-ga-mine, the highest summit on which he’d built his first small hut, but on a flat part of Mt Fuji’s crater rim at a place called Higashi Yasugawara. Lingering geothermal heat there might also help to heat the hut.

But who was going to pay for all this? In 1899, Itaru founded a fund-raising association and in February the following year came out with an 18-page prospectus for the new weather station.

Alas, the funds were slow to come in but this didn’t daunt Itaru. In 1909, at his own expense, he had a spacious villa built at Takigahara at Mt Fuji’s southern foot, as a base for further work on the mountain. And in 1912, with financial help from a prince of the realm, he set up a storehouse on the crater rim, exactly where he had suggested siting his new improved weather station.

The cover of Itaru's brochure of 1900.

By this time, a new generation of meteorologists had taken up the cause of a permanent weather station on Mt Fuji. Preparations were delayed by the world war and even more by the 1923 earthquake, which destroyed the Takigahara villa. In February of the same year, Itaru had to endure the loss of Chiyoko, who succumbed to a flu epidemic.

And so it wasn’t until 1932 that the professional weathermen were firmly established at the new government-funded summit observatory. The following summer, Itaru paid them a visit, accompanied by his daughter Kyōko, who of all their children most resembled Chiyoko.

After taking a group picture, we move on under the flowering cherry trees to look in at the great mausoleum dedicated to the great statesman Ōkuma Shigenobu (1838–1922) - Ōkuma too, it seems, was not immune to the lure of exploration, having helped in his latter years to raise funds for the Antarctic explorer Shirase Nobu.

As a meeting is scheduled at the offices of the non-profit organisation that has revived the buildings of the Mt Fuji weather station, we have to move on. But not before climbing the “Otowa Fuji” that sits at one corner of Gokokuji’s precincts. Although everybody present is of pensionable age, we seize the chance to revisit the summit of Mt Fuji, even if it has to be a miniaturised one…

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15 March: the weather forecast induces Alpinist A to change her plan. Instead of an all-day snowshoe trip, we’ll go for a quick morning traverse of Monju (365 metres), our local miniature Meizan. The sky is already grey when we start out from a temple at the east end of the ridge. And the clouds have dropped yet lower by the time we reach the main summit, an hour or so later.

All three of us have been here many times before. Yet I haven't previously noticed the big boulder to the right of the summit shrine. A helpful placard identifies it as a “lightning fossil”, hinting that the rock has its own magnetic field.

Using my phone’s inbuilt compass, we put this claim to the test. And, gratifyingly, when the phone is brought within a few centimetres of the rock, the needle does swing five degrees or so away from magnetic north. Perhaps there’s a mother lode of magnetite in this rock …

In the woods beyond Monju’s third summit, we pass by a more dramatic reminder of lightning’s power. A bolt from above has split a sapling from its crown almost down to the ground. The wood splinters scattered several metres away are still fresh, suggesting that the tree was struck within the last few months.

On the Japan Sea coast, thunderstorms are more famous for their vigour in winter than in summer. What stirs them up is the temperature difference between cold air flowing in from Siberia and the warm Japan Sea currents, as this NHK programme explains. And right here in our neighbourhood the storms often get an extra fillip from a North Korean volcano…

Blowing cold and hot: how the clouds get their charge.
Diagram courtesy of NHK.

All this adds up to the potential for some serious voltage. In January 1973, a satellite charged with monitoring the test-ban treaty detected a lightning superbolt over the Japan Sea that flashed as brightly as a tactical nuclear weapon. It was hereabouts too, near Kanazawa in 1969, that winter lightning downed one of the Air Self-Defence Force’s accident-prone Starfighters. Another lightning-struck F104 fell into the Japan Sea a few years later.

A big flash over the Sea of Japan.
Image courtesy of NHK.

Rain is spotting down as I put my phone away after capturing the shattered tree. I have to hurry after the two ladies, never ceasing to wonder at how they can walk while conversing at full tilt…

While navigating the muddy path, I’m wondering about that “fossil thunder” boulder that we tested an hour ago. Lightning clearly hits home quite a bit around here - we've seen the remains of blitzed trees on a previous Monju hike too. 

But can lightning really change a rock’s magnetic field? Well, the savants say it can. And, according to this blog, there are other “lightning fossils” on Japanese peaks, such as on Takayama (532m) in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Ryumonzan in Wakayama, and Utsukushigahara in Shinshu – the last named being one of those Hundred Mountains of Japan.

The shrine island of Oshima: strolling over to a magnetic anomaly.

But – hold it – the blogger also names Oshima (above), a rocky island more famous for its shrine and grove of cinnamon trees, as a locus of such strangely magnetised stones. Indeed, we were there with our guest just the other day: it's just an hour's drive away. But on Oshima the suspect rocks are located right by the sea in an old lava flow, not on any summit or eminence. Were they also supposed to have been recrystallized by lightning strikes? Hmm, this may need some further looking into…

By the time we get back to the car, a steady rain has set in, vindicating Alpinist A’s weather sense. It's a good thing we kept our outing short. Fortunately, there is no sign of any electricity in the air.

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18 March: even by our (S)low Mountaineering standards, an ascent of Fujikura (643 metres) sounds unambitious. And surely we won’t need the wakan – after all the snow has all but melted in the streets of Imajō, where we park the car. But I defer to the Sensei, and stuff a pair of the traditional snowshoes in my pack anyway.

This time we’ll go anticlockwise, she says, to make the route-finding easier. Route-finding, I think to myself: how can we get lost, in perfect weather, on a mere hummock? 

And, indeed, the start is easy enough to find: a statue of Kōbō Daishi stands below a flight of stone steps that leads up onto a sunny ridge. No need for the wakan here, although I note that this North Country Daishi appears to be wearing a pair of gaiters.

A Jizō figurine guards every turn of the path, every one protected in its niche against the snow by a bamboo screen. Each makes sure you are safe on your journey until the next one takes over, explains the Sensei – a bit like one air traffic controller handing your flight on to the next, I think irreverently.

The temple of Kōbōji sits on a sunny hummock overlooking the town. We sit and munch our biscuits – an interesting update on traditional yomogi sweetmeats - under the eaves of the main hall, which is still shuttered up for the winter season. 

From here onwards, we’re walking over spring snow. On the ridge linking the temple’s knoll to the mountain of Nabekura, we find a large pawprint. A bear? Or more probably, the Sensei thinks, a rabbit’s track that has broadened as it melted. 

At least in this season we’re not going to meet the vipers that haunt this sunny ridge in summer – the Sensei once met with one peacefully sunbathing on a twig, at eye level.

On Nabekura, we have to kick our way up a steep snowbank. As the sun hasn’t yet reached this slope, there’s almost a north face ambience to it. While pausing for breath, we notice that Hakusan has risen into prominence above the intervening ridges. Under the bare trees, yellow flowers dancing in the breeze herald the arrival of spring.

Or so we think, as we cross from the intermediate peak of Nabekura over to Fujikura. Suddenly we’re sinking deep into the snow at every step, and it’s time to bind on those wakan. I have to say that I’m a wakan neophyte. Back in my Tokyo days, we didn't hold with them – it was either skis for us on the rounded mountains of the Jōetsu or crampons on the colder, shallower snows of Yatsugatake. 

But that was then and this is now. I soon discover that, unlike modern snowshoes, wakan lend themselves quite well to kicking steps up steep snow. We aim ourselves upwards through the beech trees for the ridgeline, wending our way round crevasses that are opening up as the snowpack starts to creep downhill.

Back in the sunlight on the broad ridgetop, we sit down on a fallen branch and wash our onigiri down with instant coffee. By the time we have finished lunch, the snow has started to soften. Sinking a bit deeper into it, we crunch our way through the quiet hallways of beech to the summit. As on Gomando-yama, this one enshrines a large steel reflector board, so that the citizens of Imajō can view their TV soaps.

From the summit, I set off boldly down a broad open slope. I’m beginning to get the idea of wakan. Back in January, with its soft, powdery snow, modern MSR-type snowshoes were a necessity. But on the firmer snows of spring, wakan work better – particularly in dealing with the type of steep, dense terrain we are now …

A yell from above interrupts my disquisition. Seeing no tracks to follow, the Sensei has wisely consulted her GPS, which tells her that my broad open slope will lead us to perdition. A hasty course correction to the left is made. On this sunward slope, the brushwood is starting to emerge from the snowpack – as I was saying, the wakan deal with the occasional tangle of greenery better than big plastic snowshoes would.

Fujikura has yet another lesson to teach us. Wakanning our way too easily down the snowy ridge, we make the classic mistake of missing our turn-off point and have to climb back a few metres to retrieve ourselves. Only GPS will work here – there are no tracks, and no scraps of red tape on tree branches to show the way. It’s as if such aids for the improvident are disdained on this mountain. 

A little later than expected, we step up onto the knoll where Hiuchi Castle once stood. This Atago-yama has a commanding view down onto Imajō, and no doubt an excellent field of fire too. Back in shadow, we come down into the Inari Shrine, still boarded up for the winter and half-buried in a snowbank. Meltwater cascades down the stone steps as we work our way gingerly down them back into town.

The streets of Imajō are all but deserted on this Tuesday afternoon. Walking back to the car, we get the impression that nothing much has ever happened in this town, hovering as it does in the liminal zone between the prefecture’s “northern march” and its southern one. But it was right here, in 1865, that the feudal authorities put down the rebellion of the Mito loyalists, later executing 353 of the eight hundred or so captives and salting down the leaders' heads in wooden tubs. 

One really shouldn't judge a town and its history by its outward appearance. Or a mountain by its height. 

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12 March: although we're climbing nothing higher than the steep stone steps of a local shrine this afternoon, the Hyakumeizan are never far away. 

With an honoured guest in town – some decades ago, we skied Japan's Haute Route together – we pay a visit to the shrine dedicated to the goddess who taught the local paper-makers their craft. 

It turns out that the shrine’s inner sanctuary (“oku no in”) comprises the mountain under which it nestles – and that the mountain was opened in the year 719 by none other than Monk Taichō, two years after he’d made the first recorded ascent of Hakusan. 

The shrine’s office is deserted at this late hour, but somebody has left a book lying on its counter. Not only does our paper-making shrine grace the cover, but it features among the worthiest shrines in all Japan - there are, apparently, one hundred of them. Now wherever did the book’s authors get that idea, I wonder…

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9 March: The snow is still banked high beside the road and, after the first clear night in a week, the puddles are thinly glazed with ice. So is it still winter or is it spring? 

Uncertain of the answer, the Sensei and I are carrying both snowshoes and crampons for our early (or late) season ascent of Fujisha-ga-dake. Its summit rises a mere 943 metres above sea-level, but is far-famed among meizanologists for being the first that the Hyakumeizan author Fukada Kyūya ever attained. 

After a first few metres on hard-frozen snow, we opt for the crampons. A little later, we overtake a man who has chain spikes on his boots: he seems to find them insufficiently reassuring for the conditions. The wind is cold yet buds abound on the dancing branches over our heads. Spring hovers in the balance.

We take a break just where the mixed woods give way to the beech forest, at around 550 metres. The cornices are starting to rift away from the ridge, crevassing the snow ahead. Giving them a wide berth, we make for the broad summit slope and wend our way upwards between the large snowpits around each tree. Like gravity wells around a black hole, these are now deep enough to cause embarrassment if fallen into.

The summit is a big, bare snowdome, not unlike a miniature Mt Blanc. 

There is no sign of the panorama table dedicated to the memory of the Hyakumeizan author here. It must be buried at least a metre deep in the summit drift. That is probably how he would have liked it: “You never saw such things in the old days,” he growls in his Senjō-dake chapter, “and speaking for myself, I prefer my summits unencumbered with them."

Anyway, we need no panorama table to find the direction of Hakusan. Over there to the east, our local Meizan is hiding her head, but the Sensei waits and waits until the twin peaks of Onanji and Gozenpō show themselves through a brief rift in the clouds.

Meanwhile, I’m inspecting some insects that are crawling hither and thither over the snow. Since they seem to be wingless, or at least flightless, they must live here. As so often, the chronicler and natural historian Suzuki Bokushi (1770-1842) got here first in his Snow Country Tales:

“Snow lies deep on Mount Omei in Sichuan of the land of Tang, even in summer. The Mountains and Seas Classic records the existence of an insect called the snow bug living in the snows of that peak. I am sure this is the truth, for we have snow insects in Echigo as well. They begin to make their appearance in the snow at the beginning of the year, and when the snow melts they, too, disappear, their life cycle bound to the snows…”

That said, the yukimushi I’m looking at here don’t seem quite like the ones portrayed by Suzuki (see above). Wikipedia, consulted later, identifies them as Eocapnia nivalis (sekkei-kawagera). They are “thought to eat” bacteria in the snow, and prefer it cold – so much so, that they will die if picked up in the hand. Fortunately, I haven’t put this to the test; it’s quite clear that the insects are scurrying away even from the warmth reflected from my clothing …

Indeed, the warmth is gaining on us. Inspired by her glimpse of Hakusan, the Sensei leads the way to Fujisha’s true summit. Moving for a moment too close to the ridgeline, I put my stick right through the cornice. We need to be careful now: the snow that was firm as a pavement an hour ago is now letting us down into knee-deep sinkholes almost every other step. Spring is winning.