Tales of past and present (2)

Continued: A talk about the foreign explorers of Japan’s mountains, then and now.

So times had changed. We’re now in the Taishō era (1912–26). In these years huts were built, paths were made and guide associations formed. Now everybody could go to the mountains. JAC members started to do pioneer work abroad – notably Maki “Yūkō” Aritsune (1894–1989) on the Eiger’s Mittellegi Ridge in 1921, and on Mt Alberta in 1925.

Maki Yuko returns from the Eiger with his guides, September 1921

What were the foreigners doing at this time? Well, some joined the JAC – the club’s records must be very interesting on this topic. According to Hamish Ion, a mountain historian, within a year of the JAC’s foundation there were eleven foreign members (not all of them English) two were Anglican clergymen, like Weston, two were university teachers, and the rest were businessmen in Yokohama, Tokyo and Kobe.

Foreign women too joined: Mrs Frances Weston and Mrs Emily Elwin became members before 1923. Also, two lady missionaries were introduced by your founder member Takano Takazō and Kondō Shigekichi (1883–1969), who had studied at Glasgow University.

Interestingly, when Mrs Weston went back to England, she wasn’t able to join Britain’s Alpine Club – instead she had to join the Ladies Alpine Club founded in 1907 by the hard-driving Mrs Elizabeth Aubrey LeBlond, the pioneer winter alpine climber and mountain photographer. Officially, of course, the JAC did not admit women until 1949 – but this was still a quarter of a century ahead of Britain’s Alpine Club (1974) and the Swiss Alpine Club (1980). This too was pioneer work.

H E Daunt, the "Bell Goat".

Some foreigners also founded their own association: the Mountain Goats of Kobe, who often trained on Rokkō-san. I’m not sure when the MGK started (some say 1911 as the Ancient Order of Mountain Goats), but its house journal Inaka first came out in 1915 and continued for almost a decade. It was edited by a Kobe resident and oil company employee, H E Daunt. 

Daunt was a golfer before he was a mountaineer. As a member of the Kobe Golf Club, the first Japanese golf club, opened in 1913, he won the Japanese amateur championship in 1915. In May 1919, he helped to design Korea’s first-ever golf course, describing his experience in Inaka (1923). Visiting Seoul at the invitation of the South Manchurian Railway Company in May 1919, he helped Mr Inohara, the general manager of the Chosun Hotel, set out the course.

Is it perhaps an exquisite coincidence that there are just 18 volumes of Inaka, like the 18 holes of a golf round?

As you can see, Inaka was well produced – it was printed by a local newspaper company. Alas, even single volumes of Inaka are very rare and expensive - complete sets are even rarer: I only know of two: one in London and one in Kobe – I hope one day it will be reprinted or at least a selection of articles. There is some good stuff in there, for example, an eyewitness account of the 1915 Yake-dake eruption by J Merle Davis, an American missionary, in Inaka Vol II, 1915.

The eruption of Yake-dake in 1915.

By the way, many, perhaps most, of the leading MGK members were also members of the JAC. And for a number of years after the first world war, H E Daunt edited the English-language supplement of Sangaku, the JAC’s journal.

The MGK were not the only show in town. At one point, more than a third of the members of the Kobe toho-kai (神戸徒歩会) were foreigners, and its journal Pedestrian carried articles in English as well as Japanese. The Kobe toho-kai was founded in 1910 as the Kobe Waraji-kai (神戸草鞋会).

Of course, clubs are never the whole story ...

(Continued)

First steps to climbing (10): "that is what the rope is for"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

It is not unusual to meet a would-be climber whose ideas of the use of the rope are peculiar. 

On the Western Buttress of Lliwed.
Detail of photo in G D Abraham, The Complete Mountaineer. 

A friend was recently taking a beginner up the south-east gully on Great End, and having reached the top of the first pitch he hauled in the rope and called down to the novice, "Come on!" "All right," was the reply. But nothing happened, and the dialogue was repeated. Then the leader became anxious and asked if his charge was indisposed. "No!" came the reply, "I'm waiting for you to pull me up. Surely that's what the rope is for!" Thus it may be advisable here to deal with the practical elements of rock climbing…

References

From George D. Abraham, First Steps to Climbing, Mills & Boon, Limited, London, 1923.

First steps to climbing (9): "selfishness must be curbed"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

If the leader is selected, and in some situation finds himself unable to surmount a certain crucial difficulty, there should be no question of another member of the party taking his place. Numerous catastrophes have been due to this. 

Climbing slabs on the Charmoz.
Photo from G D Abraham, The Complete Mountaineer.

The terrible fall of four experts on the face of Scawfell Pinnacle followed the change of leadership. Undoubtedly the right man was leading on this occasion. Why he changed places and allowed a less experienced companion to attempt the desperate ascent of the hitherto unclimbed pitch where he had failed is a mountain mystery which will never be solved. 

There may be a temptation to forget this advice on easier climbs, but its soundness is undoubted at all times. The beginner should be orthodox on this point, and if his friends have the right spirit of true mountain comradeship, the happiness and success of his and their climbing career will be promoted. 

Selfishness must be curbed. Once the rope is tied on, the party becomes a human unit with a purpose to overcome some of the strongest of Nature's forces. Every member must do his best, and the greatest joys of climbing are when, with the summit attained, each one feels that he has had a share in promoting success.

References

From George D. Abraham, First Steps to Climbing, Mills & Boon, Limited, London, 1923.

First steps to climbing (8): "slow but sure"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

The great point is to start uphill slowly. Imitate the slow, rolling, rhythmic gait of the Swiss guide, who can walk uphill all day without a rest and finish practically as fresh as he started. This is of tremendous importance. 

Crossing the bergschrund on the Schreckhorn.
Photo from G D Abraham, The Complete Mountaineer.

The mountaineer never knows what a day may bring forth; for instance, bad weather may develop and find the hurried or over-speeding "freshman" of the morning with little reserve of strength or resource when it is needed. Scores and scores of times the writer has seen this happen in Cumberland. In the Alps it may be a matter of life and death; this has been illustrated in the case of innumerable fatal disasters.

Frostbite, again, attacks an overdone party in a most mysterious and surprising fashion. The writer was once raced up an Alpine peak by two young climbers in charge of two careless Swiss guides. They reached the summit first, of course, but both were more or less exhausted by their rate of ascent. The day was bright and sunny. Certainly a chill northerly breeze blew over the crest, but the writer wore neither gloves, muffler, nor anything except ordinary clothing. Still, the two speedmen were suffering badly from frost-bite, mainly in the feet. After receiving the usual first aid by prolonged rubbing with snow, they proceeded valleywards painfully. The case proved serious and later some toes had to be removed. The plan "slow but sure" always tells in the end on the mountains, and when setting forth for a climb this should never be forgotten.

References

From George D. Abraham, First Steps to Climbing, Mills & Boon, Limited, London, 1923.

Tales of past and present (1)

A talk about the foreign explorers of Japan’s mountains, then and now.

Thank you Ishizuka-san and members of the Ryokusōkai for inviting me to speak here at the offices of the storied Japanese Alpine Club – the original idea was to talk about translating Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan), but translations can be a dry subject, and so with your help, we settled on the topic of foreign mountaineers in Japan – what they did in the past, what they are doing now, and what they might think of doing in the future.

When I started looking at this topic, I realised that this is a huge field. Quite simply, even if we restrict ourselves to the early days, more foreigners explored the mountains of Japan than can possibly be mentioned, even cursorily, in a one-hour talk. The literature itself is quite sizeable – for example, I haven’t yet managed to lay my hands on a copy of Shōda Hito'o’s magisterial Ijintachi no Nihon Arupusu (Strangers in the Japan Alps).

So – my apologies in advance – I’m afraid that this talk will by no means consult all the available sources; it will skate selectively over the surface. And it will raise more questions than it gives answers. But let us wade in there anyway.

The past
When it comes to the past, there’s no question where we should start. In today’s company, we have to begin with Walter Weston (1861–1940) – here he is with Shiga Shigetaka: together they were the JAC’s first honorary vice presidents.

Shiga Shigetaka and Walter Weston.

By the way, I was embarrassed to read in the Ryokusōkai’s newsletter that certain senior members of the JAC entrusted Weston with a valuable picture scroll, which they intended as a gift to the British Alpine Club’s president. But, when he went back to England, Weston apparently mislaid this handsome present. This is regrettable in the extreme, and I can only bow deeply in apology on behalf of my countryman.

Kamijo Kamonji (left) and Walter Weston (right).

To this audience, Weston is so well known that there is no need to rehearse his story in detail. He first came to Japan in 1888. His book Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps (1896) was based on climbs in 1891–93, during which he climbed Yari-ga-take with the pioneer guide Kamijō Kamonji (1847–1917). Then he went home and, in April 1902, he got married.

Kojima Usui and Yari-ga-take surmounted by a surveyor's marker.

In August of the same year, Kojima Usui, made his famous ascent of Yari – inspired by Shiga Shigetaka’s Nihon Fūkeiron (A theory of the Japanese landscape). Then, in 1903, Kojima discovered that Weston had come back to Japan – actually it was his climbing companion on Yari, Okano Kinjirō, who thought of looking in the Yokohama phone directory. Okano and Kojima met Weston for tea, over which they discussed the idea of an alpine club and an alpine journal in Japan – and the rest is history. In October 1905: the JAC was founded.

For his achievements, Weston is sometimes called the father of Japanese alpinism. But was he really?

Foreigners were climbing in Japan before Weston was even born – a whole generation earlier.

Let us rewind to September 4, 1860: Rutherford Alcock (1809–97), the British emissary, is setting out with seven British colleagues and about a hundred Japanese officials, agents of the bakufu and their attendants with thirty horses. Alcock’s dog, Toby, is going along too.

An illustration from Rutherford Alcock's The Capital of the Tycoon.

Alcock’s main aim was political: to assert his right to travel freely under 1858 treaty. But it wasn’t just about politics. Before he became a diplomat, he had been a surgeon and he liked to have men of science around him. In the party was the botanist and gardener John Veitch (1839–1870). On Mt Fuji, Veitch “discovered” the shirabiso and named it for himself: Abies veitchii.

John Veitch and the tree he named for himself.

On September 11th, they all reached summit of Mt Fuji, where a certain Navy Lieutenant Robinson mistakenly calculated an altitude of more than four thousand metres. Later, alas, at the Atami hot springs the dog Toby strolled over an erupting geyser with fatal consequences. Veitch too died too young, at the age of 31 in England, but you can still visit a garden that he helped to create there…

At "Hakoni": from Rutherford Alcock's The Capital of the Tycoon.

As only diplomats could move freely at that time, they naturally accounted for the earliest wave of mountaineering by foreigners. Six years after Alcock’s climb, a Swiss diplomat led the second gaijin ascent of Fuji. 

The Swiss delegation in Edo: contemporary print.

This was Caspar Brennwald (1838–99), who later helped to found a trading company that still exists today. The Swiss planned to bivouac on the summit but met with a thunderstorm that forced them to seek shelter in a pilgrim’s hut.

         Carl Johann Maximowicz and some of his specimens.

On the heels of the diplomats came the scholars. The Russian botanist Carl Johann Maximowicz (1827–91) arrived in Japan late in 1860 and, during the next two years, walked from Hokkaido to Kyushu, taking in mountains such as Unzen, Aso and Kujū on the way. Along the way, he must have found a lot of interesting plants: he sent home 72 chests full of specimens – some of which can still be seen in museums today. Another naturalist, the German Wilhelm Dönitz (1838–1912), climbed Nantai and Fuji in 1875, although he was more interested in spiders and millipedes than flowers.

Benjamin Smith Lyman with his team of surveyors.

Geologists and geographers were no less active. In 1874, Benjamin Smith Lyman (1835–1920), an American mining engineer and surveyor, explored the Daisetsuzan while seeking the source of the Ishikari River. He also surveyed the oil fields in Niigata, partly at his own expense when the government’s funds ran out. By the way, I have never seen a detailed account of Lyman’s journey up the Ishikari River – even the biography by Kuwada Gonpei doesn’t have one. What a pity: it must have been a fascinating journey, and one that can never be repeated.

The following year, Heinrich Naumann (1854–1927), a German geologist attached to the Kaisei Gakkō, climbed Asama. His temper too was said to be volcanic, which cut short his stay in Japan. Otherwise he would certainly have climbed more mountains. But he did get to name the Fossa Magna.

John Milne and an illustration from his book on Mt. Fuji.

Another geologist, John Milne (1850–1913) visited Iwate, Chokai, Gassan and Aso during his spell in Japan as a foreign advisor, which lasted from 1875 to 1895. He wrote two papers trying to explain the curvature of Mt Fuji’s slopes, a question which still hasn’t been fully answered to this day. Wisely, he gave up on that line of enquiry and concentrated on earthquakes. Today, he is known as “father of the seismograph”.

Ernest Satow and his guidebook. 

Of course, I should have mentioned Ernest Satow (1843–1929) before. As a diplomat, he was among the first foreigners to explore the Japanese mountains – during his first posting from 1862 to 1883, he traversed Okutama, visited Fuji, Asama, Haruna, Akagi, and Nikko-Shirane, crossed Tanzawa, climbed Ontake, Yatsugadake, Hakusan, and Tateyama, and made first British ascents of Nōtori and Ai-no-take in the Southern Alps. And he was a keen amateur botanist, even writing a paper on the cultivation of bamboos.

From a contemporary review of the Satow and Hawes guidebook. 

But he made two more signal contributions to mountaineering in Japan. First, he was the literal father of Takeda Hisayoshi (1883–1972), who became a founder of the JAC and an expert on Japan’s alpine plants. And, secondly, with another Englishman, he compiled a guidebook: A Handbook for Travellers in Central & Northern Japan – first published in 1881.

As we shall see, guidebooks are important: they influence where later travellers go and what they see. This one exerted an even more durable sway – it contains a section by William Gowland (1842–1922), a mining engineer, who was the first to talk about high mountains “that might perhaps be termed the Japanese Alps”. And Shiga Shigetaka probably borrowed material from Satow’s guide for his Nippon Fūkeiron – especially the chapter that inspired Kojima’s ascent of Yari.

Mr and Mrs Weston at Kamikochi in 1923.

That brings us back to Weston. For his travels in Kyushu and Honshu, he used the Satow and Hawes guidebook, now known as “Murray” after its publisher, which he later helped to update. He also used trains where he could – according to Weston himself, there were already more than 3,600 kilometres of railways. So, even in the 1890s, his mountaineering had quite a modern flavour, sped on its way as it was by a detailed guidebook and efficient public transport. All that was lacking was modern maps. 

So what happened after the Japan Alpine Club was formed? For a start, JAC members took over the role of pioneers. Kojima Usui identified a “Golden Age” of mountain exploration that lasted until the Army Surveyors published their maps of all the Japan Alps, removing the last shred of mystery from the mountains.

Thus, when Walter Weston traversed Ōtenshō-dake in August 1914, he was following in the footsteps of Kojima and his JAC colleagues, not the other way round. The titles of his two mountain books say it all: “Mountaineering and Exploration…” (1896), followed by “The Playground of the Far East” (1918). By the way, while travelling towards the Northern Alps by train, he was surprised and appalled by the sight of the new oil rigs along the Niigata coast. 

View of oil rigs on the Niigata coast. 

So times had changed…

(Continued)

A meizanologist's diary (106)

2 April: half a day’s flying out of KIX, the map display shows that we’re coasting in over northeast Greenland. Perfectly placed on the shaded side of the aircraft, I turn to the window only to find that it has blacked itself out.

Of course, I realise, we are on one of those notorious craft – let’s just call them buffs – with centrally controlled window darkening. Remonstrating with a flight attendant is not an option, given the airline industry’s current commitment to an intense customer experience.

Konrad Steffen
Portrait by Fridolin Walcher.

Yet somewhere down there, beyond the blacked-out windows, is a coastal glacier named in honour of Konrad Steffen (1952–2020), the Swiss glaciologist who spent his career investigating the dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet. 

About a decade ago, Professor Steffen came to our alpine club in Zurich and explained to us in his quiet, unemphatic way – he was a master of science communication – what would happen if, or rather when, the world’s ice sheets melted. Some years later, he vanished into the depths of the ice sheet he’d dedicated his life to studying.

Location of the Sermeq Konrad Steffen.
Map by courtesy of Leister Expeditions: 2021 and 2022 report.

Later in the flight, kneeling on the floor – with one knee embedded in a bag of garbage to line myself up with the tiny inspection window in the buff’s back door – I do manage a glimpse of the ice sheet scrolling by. Soon other passengers are queuing up to share this intense customer experience. It seems that quite a few of us are fascinated by this land of ice. Alas, it's far too late now for anybody to pay their respects to Koni Steffen's glacier.

Later still, it occurs to me that, rigged in the eclipse though it is, this buff does provide the perfect metaphor for the pickle we’re in. If we can’t handle the idea of seven metres of sea level rise  –  and that is just from the ice sheet right below us  – then it's surely tempting simply to black out the view and pretend none of this is happening ...

A meizanologist's diary (105)

31 March: for the third time this year, we drive past the papier-mâché dinosaur towards Toritate-yama. For a mountain of just 1,308 metres, just an hour or so from home, the spaciousness of its summit views is hard to beat.

Couples don’t have to agree about everything. When we leave the carpark at the leisurely hour of 9.30 am, the Sensei is wearing crampons while I am doing without, expecting that the snow will soon turn gloppy, as on Daisen a few days ago.

Since our last visit, the pits around each beech tree have deepened and widened, like the gravity wells around a growing black hole. We steer clear of them. As for the crampons, we are both right – the Sensei’s drive firmly into the underlying hard snow, but my cramponless soles feel equally secure in the previous days' light dusting of powder. Even after an hour, the snow shows no sign of gloppiness: the powder must be insulating the rest of the snowpack…

The summer carpark is still a metre deep in snow. We refresh ourselves there with coffee and “monaka”, a kind of anpan with a crispy coating. Then we address the steep ridge up to the summit. It’s noon by the time Hakusan heaves into view above Toritate’s snowdome.

The cool northerly breeze may explain why the snow is still crisp underfoot. And it certainly accounts for the miniature cornice that runs along a nearby snow-berm, as if extruded from the icing syringe of a master pâtissier. 

But what has the wind to do, if anything, with the dingy tone of our local Meizan? Somehow, Hakusan is looking browner than the pristine snows under our own feet. Then we get it – up on the higher mountain, the northerly gale has scoured away all the new powder. This leaves only the old snowpack, stained brown from all the dust that has blown in from the continent in the past few weeks.

We continue up to the subpeak of Itadani-no-kashira, from which we take in the liberal views back along the ridge towards Gomando and eastwards to Hakusan. 

By the time we are back at Toritate, our top-of-descent, the snow has turned slushy under a crisp film of ice – this too we call “monaka” says the Sensei – and we are entirely alone: everyone else went home hours ago.

On our way down, we meet a solitary buzzard working its way up the slope. In easy circles, the bird lifts away until we lose sight of it somewhere among the building clouds.

A meizanologist's diary (104)

29 March: on a day when both the sakura zensen and a rain front have converged on Tokyo, we’re at a kondankai on the Japanese Alpine Club’s premises near Ichigaya. And since the Sensei has put me on my best behaviour, I’m doing my best not to be controversial. At this point, a lady smilingly asks me if I aim to complete the Hyakumeizan.

Mt Bandai: a mountain that watches over several home villages
(and sometimes demolishes them). 

This puts me on the spot. Having blogged for more than a decade under the masthead of One Hundred Mountains, I can’t plausibly deny an interest in them. On the other hand, the Sensei and I probably haven’t climbed more than half of the full round between us. So I smile back at my interlocutor and prevaricate: “I haven’t yet decided” I hear myself saying wishy-washily.

As further explanation seems to be required, I refer to fellow blogger David Lowe’s reflective and soundly reasoned essay about The Trouble with the Hyakumeizan–And Why I’m Not Finishing. To sum up just a few of his thoughts, too much focus on the Hyakumeizan encourages a checklist mentality, foments overcrowding, and quite possibly promotes unsafe climbing behaviour.

To which I could add, having just returned from a less than totally successful Hyakumeizan foray, that the pleasures were momentary, the positions ridiculous, and the expenses damnable… But as the Sensei is within earshot, I keep that quip to myself. After all, Lord Chesterfield wasn’t talking about mountains.

And yet … had Fukada Kyūya not written that book, I probably would never have acquainted myself with Daisen’s extraordinary character – the rambling and oligarchical ridgeline, with no peaklet topping out more than a few metres above or below another – its curious ecosystems (I mean, how many other mountains can boast a firefly colony on their summit?) – and the tenacious yet friendly villagers who live, still up to their ears in snow right now, within the shadow of its ancient crater walls.

Mmm, the villagers and their community – we may be onto something there. If the Hyakumeizan author didn’t plan on crafting a checklist – he said himself that he might change a mountain or two – then what on earth was he writing about? There is more than a hint in the first paragraph of the chapter on his own home mountain, the one that rises above his birthplace in Daishōji:

A mountain watches over the home village of most Japanese people. Tall or short, near or far, some mountain watches over our native village like a tutelary deity. We spend our childhood in the shadow of our mountain and we carry it with us in memory when we grow up and leave the village. And however much our lives may change, the mountain will always be there, just as it always has been, to welcome us back to our home village. My native mountain is Hakusan …

As it happened, though, it was a foray to a quite different volcano that first started me thinking about Fukada’s paragraph. After tagging the summit of Bandai on a grey mid-November day, I dropped into a local hut and found it crowded almost to the rafters.

Yet nobody, except possibly myself, was questing the Hyakumeizan. In fact, nobody seemed to have any interest in them at all. They were all local folk, intent on celebrating their local hut’s last weekend of the season before it closed for the winter. For Bandai was their home mountain, not some item on a distant city-dweller’s checklist.

Ed Douglas's Kinder Scout: The People's Mountain:
Meizan philosophy applied to the Peak District.

Much more recently, I was flattered to find that Ed Douglas, one of Britain’s most prolific and versatile mountain writers, had quoted the same paragraph by Fukada at the start of his luminous and delightful monograph on Derbyshire’s Kinder Scout: The People’s Mountain. For Kinder Scout is, of course, Ed’s own home mountain.

And his too is a book about the people who surround a mountain and give it meaning. Here are the people who organised the famous mass trespass of 1932 so that everybody would be free to roam their local hills.

And then there is George King (b. 1919), no less public spirited but in a different way, who was tasked by an alien intelligence (see pages 160–61) to charge the mountain’s rocks “with a kind of cosmic energy”. Indeed, the very spot where he did so is illustrated in the book by one of John Beatty’s excellent photos. With stories like these, I think that Ed gets very close to the Hyakumeizan way of thinking, even if he hasn’t yet applied his widely roving pen to the Japanese mountains. 

One who has written about Japanese mountains – quite a lot of them – is William Banff, aka Willie Walks. His Tozan: A Japanese Mountain Odyssey is a lively peak-by-peak account of climbing each of the Hyakumeizan. But, as noted in our review, there’s more going on in this book than wading through a checklist.

In his Hakusan chapter, Willie circles back to Fukada’s famous paragraph, as quoted above, and then segues into a meditation on his own home mountain back in Australia. You’ll have to read this passage for yourself – it deserves not to be paraphrased in a mere blog. Suffice it to say that this too is a book that captures quite a bit of the original Hyakumeizan spirit.

Back at the Japanese Alpine Club, I realise that I haven’t given the smiling lady anything like an adequate answer. So am I going to climb all those Hyakumeizan or am I not? Well, I’ll certainly go on attempting this one or that whenever there’s a chance. And if so, I’ll keep in mind that, as each summit watches over somebody’s home village, we Hyakumeizan seekers are only guests there. 

For the same reason, I think I’ll abstain from trying to charge the rocks with any kind of cosmic energy. The locals might raise their eyebrows, you know.

A meizanologist's diary (103)

25 March: the Yakumo – it’s almost fraudulent to call it an express – meanders through the undramatic river valleys of Bitchū towards its rencontre with the Japan Sea at Yonago....

... when – what the heck is that? – a monstrous excrescence looms up at the end of the valley we’re heading into. Striped with snow in all its south-facing gullies, and completely out of scale with the surrounding landscape, this incredible bulk suggests a half-inflated balloon already tugging at its moorings. This has to be Daisen: no other candidate is possible. The name means “big mountain” in local dialect and nothing else in this part of Japan comes close to its seventeen hundred metres. 

26 March: fortunately there is no need to tackle all of those metres, since yesterday evening's bus up to Daisenji has disposed of a good half of them. Under a dripping canopy of beech, I set off into a morning fog at a quarter to seven – the hostelry was inflexible about an earlier breakfast. In this season, snow lies underfoot from the start but there’s no need for crampons until the slope steepens some way above the secluded pavilion of the Amida-dō.

The sun starts to break through the mist more or less at the treeline. And here the trees really do end: unlike on other high mountains, there is no upper tier of sporadic pines or silver birch above the beechwoods. I take a break at the first refuge hut, which is still half-buried, and by the time I’m on my way again the spring sunlight has already started to soften the snow. 

A broad snow ridge leads up to the slanted tableland of Misen. Here the snow is thinner, and a sturdy boardwalk testifies to the erosive power of thousands of summer Hyakumeizan seekers. 

The crampon-chewed planks lead past a patch of scruffy evergreens which turn out to be the much-vaunted kyaraboku grove. The Daisen Museum at the mountain's foot apostrophises it as follows:

The yew … forms vast pure forests of some eight hectares ... and because it is Japan’s largest pure forest, it is designated as a Special Natural Monument. The yew is said to be a variant type of yew, but while the height of many yews is more than 20m, the height of Japanese yew is 1 to 2m. The trunk of the Japanese yew seems to be creeping on the ground, so the community is just like a green carpet.

I’m up on Misen at about 9.30. The day is yet young, and the ridgeline looks navigable as far as Ken-ga-mine, the true summit, which is all of twenty metres higher than Misen. Indeed, another climber is coming back from that direction. But he wears a disenchanted look on his face and for good reason – at every other step he is sinking knee-deep into the porridge-like snow.

Trying my own luck, I go over a small peaklet and posthole my way down into the first big dip in the ridge. So far so good: judging by the footprints, the other climber didn’t get this far. Then the ridgeline narrows. A prod with the ice-axe rules out one alternative – to keep walking Blondin-style along the ridge crest. After hours in the broiling sun, the snow up there has degenerated into candyfloss. So what about cutting crabwise across the northward slope – I glance downwards: if the mushy snow gives way there, it will precipitate a handsome “tour of the north face”. And after a bit of reflection, I find myself in complete accord with the other climber – it's time to turn back. 

Back on Misen, I’m starting to regret that late breakfast. On the other hand, there is now time to appreciate the view. Snowy Daisen floats above a sea of haze like an iceberg; the "kosa" from the continent cuts the summit ridge off from the lower world so that its wooded footings just dissolve into the murk below.

No other peaks rise above the charcoal line of the dust horizon: we are alone above a sea of vapour. People question whether it’s meaningful to pick out just one hundred mountains from all that Japan has to offer. But, if you insist on playing that game, then surely Daisen has to be one of them.

In the afternoon, I climb up the stone steps to the Daisenji's main temple hall. “It is a deeply evocative place,” says the Hyakumeizan author, and who am I to disagree. The courtyard is still a metre deep in snow so that the one other visitor, wearing shoes that are ill adapted to the conditions, has to mince his way back to safety. When he reaches me, he asks if I can take his photo with his mobile phone. We fall into conversation.

It turns out that he is a recently retired production engineer who is about to take up a voluntary role as the organiser of a sports event. But before starting on that project, he’s undertaken to visit all the twenty (or was that twenty-eight) famous shrines and temples of the Sanyōdō. And today he has completed his round. I nod sympathetically: we are all captives of our self-appointed quests ...