Tales of past and present (6)

Continued: a talk about foreign explorers of Japan's mountains, then and now.

As remarked in the previous post, it took a long time for foreigners to recover their enthusiasm for the Japanese mountains. When they did, new highways and Shinkansen routes may have played a part: in the late 1980s and 1990s, the Japan Alps started to come within the regular weekend range of big city dwellers for the first time.

Paul Hunt atop Shiomi-dake (3,046.9 metres).
Illustration from Paul Hunt's Hiking in Japan.

In 1988, at long last, a new English-language guidebook came out. This was Paul Hunt’s Hiking in Japan. Hunt was well qualified to write on the mountains, having graduated in geology and later working as a meteorologist. He came to Japan in 1978 to work with a team exploring for oil in the Japan Sea (following in the prospecting footsteps of Benjamin Smith Lyman). In the introduction to his book, Hunt mentions several mountain-related associations including the JAC, the Friends of the Earth, and the International Adventure Club.

The guidebook that launched a thousand mountain trips ...

The International Adventure Club, Hunt says, is "a group of foreigners and Japanese who organize hiking, rock climbing, and skiing trips out of Tokyo. They have monthly meetings in Tokyo and issue a newsletter. They can be contacted through Dave Parry or Yuko Nakano…."

In Early Heisei or thereabouts, in the early 1990s, a number of foreign climbers must have phoned Dave or Yuko – indeed, I was one of them. This small group had a smattering of experience in the European Alps and we wanted to try out some routes in the Japan Alps – somehow we had got to hear about Takidani and Kita-dake Buttress. In my case, it was a photo in Nihon Tozan Taikei, volume 7, that set me going …

Alpine Workman (and civil servant) inspects the Dome in Takidani.

The next step was suggested by a Japanese friend who had recently joined us. His idea was for our alpine group to join the Japan Workers’ Alpine Federation (Rōsan, or the Nihon Kinrōsha Sangakurenmei). This we did, in early 1992, becoming one of about 70 clubs in the Shinjuku bloc, and after that we called ourselves – or at least I did – the Alpine Workmen.

Alpine Workman (and industrial engineer) on Tsurugi-dake, Genjiro Ridge.

From that time onwards, our club calendar was probably little different from any other Rōsan club: November: winter skills refreshment climb on Mt Fuji; from January, yama-skiing, March: snow training at Tanigawa-dake, perhaps with a climb of Kuro-one; Golden Week: gasshuku on skis, eg Tsurugi-dake, Genjirō-one; June, rock-climbing and sawa-nobori, August; alpine climbing gasshuku, perhaps on Tsurugi D-Face … and so on.

Alpine Workmen taking liquid refreshment in Akagi-sawa.

A sociologist might have had an interesting time with us. Our founder president was rising up the ranks of a well-known machinery maker, our secretary helped to run an American bank’s credit card scheme, while other members worked for MITI, universities, a law firm, an international food company, an oil company, and so on. If there was one common theme, it might just be that most of us came originally from the countryside (Shikoku, Oxford, Christchurch NZ etc). But even that wasn’t true for everybody – one member came from New York, and her father had helped to build the Apollo Lunar Module at Grumman Aerospace.

I used to think of us as being part of the “present”. Of course, that can’t be true any longer. Although the IAC itself has successor organisations in both the Kanto and Kansai, our own alpine association ceased to exist decades ago. So we are in every sense history, just like the Mountain Goats of Kobe, about whom we knew nothing at that time. 

So what is going on right now?

(To be continued)

Images and ink (54)

Image: Everest in winter, by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure.

Ink: The Magic Mountain (1924) by Thomas Mann, translated by H T Lowe-Porter.

One afternoon in February, the gentlemen arranged an excursion to Monstein, some hour and a half from the village by sleigh. … The cold was severe, the mountains misty. The road, a narrow, railingless shelf between mountain wall and abyss, rose steeply into the fir forests. They disentangled themselves from their wraps and climbed out in front of the little Monstein inn, that called itself a Kurhaus, and went on foot a few steps further to get the view south-west toward the Stulsergrat. The gigantic wall, three thousand metres high, was shrouded in vapours. Only one jagged tooth reared itself heavenward out of the mist — superterrestrial, Valhallan, far and faint and awesomely inaccessible. Hans Castorp admired it immensely, and summoned the others to follow suit. It was he who with due respect dubbed it inaccessible — and afforded Settembrini the chance of saying that this particular rock was considerably frequented. And, in general, that there were few spots where man had not set his foot. That was rather tall talk, retorted Naphta; and mentioned Mount Everest, which to date had icily refused to surrender to man’s importunity, and seemed likely to continue to do so. The humanist was put out. They returned to the Kurhaus, before which stood other unharnessed sleighs beside their own.

Tales of past and present (5)

Continued: a talk about foreign explorers of Japan's mountains, then and now.

The Great Tokyo Earthquake marked a kind of boundary in history. It’s difficult to generalise what effect it had on mountaineers, Japanese or foreign. That said, it’s hard to find any full-length book written by a foreign mountaineer in Japan after 1923, at least in English.

Murray Walton (centre) with companion and guide at Yarisawa.
Illustration from Scrambles in Japan and Formosa.

The prominent exception is Scrambles in Japan and Formosa published in 1934 by W. H. Murray Walton (b. 1890). Murray Walton climbed Niitaka-yama on Taiwan, the “new highest mountain” in the Japanese Empire, traversed the Southern Japan Alps from end to end, and made climbs in the Central and Northern Alps too. 

Daihasenzan, a mountain of Taiwan.
Illustration from Scrambles in Japan and Formosa.

Like his acquaintance Walter Weston,  Murray Walton was a missionary and was fascinated by the Ontake religion, visiting the mountain three times. He knew and climbed with several prominent MGK members (for example, the Reverend W H Elwin, and the American diplomat Eugene Dooman) but doesn’t mention the club in his book. On the other hand, he was a proud member of the JAC for at least 15 years.

A seance on Ontake.
Illustration from Scrambles in Japan and Formosa. 

After Murray Walton, foreign climbers in Japan go very quiet. Was that due to the earthquake or Japan’s growing international isolation? Or did foreigners simply stop writing books? It seems that the drop in activity was real. Kojima Usui, who wrote the foreword to Murray Walton’s book, says this: “In recent years there have been, however, fewer foreign residents interested in mountaineering. Their enthusiasm too seems to be decreasing.”

One possible explanation comes from the scholar-diplomat Edwin Reischauer, who as the son of missionaries, was brought up in Japan. As he recalls in My Life Between Japan and America:

During the 1930s, when the police were becoming increasingly suspicious of all foreigners as potential spies and one was constantly subjected to police interrogation while traveling, my birth in Japan served as a form of passport. A policeman, after dutifully questioning my identity, what I was doing, and where I was going, all of which was already recorded in his notebook, would then frequently ask me about my attitude toward the Japanese government or the current aggression Japan was engaged in on the continent. 

Indeed, the enthusiasm of foreign mountaineers took a long time to rekindle. In the 1950s and 1960s, Japan saw an enormous resurgence of hiking and alpinism, especially after the first ascent of Manaslu in May 1956.

May 9, 1956: first ascent of Manaslu by a JAC expedition.

But where were the foreigners during this so-called Manaslu boom? In English, at least, I can’t find much writing about the Japanese mountains during these decades. 

Well-thumbed copy of the JNTO guide, with a roughly contemporaneous carabiner.

And there was certainly no up-to-date guidebook to Japan’s mountains for foreigners, although the official Japan National Tourist Office guide did its best to include mountain-related advice. My copy, dated February 1975, recommends the Ochūdo-meguri on Mt Fuji as “a delightful summer excursion”. I hope that bit has been updated in more recent editions, or somebody is in for a shock.

A first sign of renewed foreign interest in Japan’s mountains came from Oscar Benl (1914–86), a professor of Japanese literature, who translated Inoue Yasushi’s Hyōheki into German as Die Eiswand in 1979. Benl studied at Tokyo University before the war, and submitted his doctorate on the ideals of Zeami, the noh master, in 1943.

Professor Benl also translated works by Murasaki Shikibu, Yoshida Kenkō, Shiga Naoya, Ibuse Masuji, Kawabata Yasunari, Dazai Osamu, Mishima Yukio, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Funabashi Seiichi and Abe Kōbō. He was Germany’s retort to Donald Keene. Why did he pick Hyōheki in particular? (He translated Inoue’s Tempyō no iraka (The rooftile of Tempyō) and Ryōjū (The hunting gun) too). Perhaps it was because his first academic post was in Munich, the capital city of German alpinism. But this is just a guess…

(Continued)

First steps to climbing (15): "loose rocks play strange tricks"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

It has often been asked whether a knowledge of geology is any use in climbing. Authorities, mostly theorists, differ on this point, but the writer has found it of no service.

The crucial pitch on Moss Ghyll, Scafell - the lower figure is
A D Godley, Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Photo by the Abraham Brothers (detail), reprinted in A Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

In many climbs with famous geologists the science has never asserted itself in any practical way. Loose structures certainly interest them most, and the fact that occasionally no stone has been left unturned in their efforts summitwards may prove trying to those below in a crumbling gully.

Truth to tell, loose sections on a mountain, big or little, may occur unexpectedly to the most skilled scientist, and the climber needs all his skill and care on such places. No thoughts can be spared for fossils or faults – only faults of judgment matter. Great discernment is necessary in the use of loose holds. The general plan is to distribute the weight as much as possible on as many holds as are available.

Loose rocks play strange tricks, and the beginner should, as far as possible, avoid notorious places. Large pieces as big as a cenotaph will frequently stand firm whilst one man mounts over them and the following climber may bring down the whole mass.

References

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

Tales of past and present (4)

Continued: a talk about foreign explorers of Japan's mountains, then and now.

Among the many foreigners to fall under Mt Fuji's spell, Frederick Starr (1858–1933) may have been the most enigmatic. Starr was a lecturer and professor at the University of Chicago for more than thirty years. 

Frederick Starr

As an anthropologist and ethnographer, he first came to Japan in 1904 because he’d taken an interest in the Ainu. In addition to studying them, however, he wrote up a short biography (1916) of Matsuura Takeshirō, who explored Ezo (now Hokkaidō) in the mid-nineteenth century.

During subsequent Japan trips, Starr started collecting charms (ofuda) and votive slips (senjafuda or nōsatsu). This earned him the nickname of Ofuda-Hakase (お札博士). It also led him to Mt Fuji. He walked around its foot in 1913, climbed to the summit in 1917 and 1919, and in the same year walked the Ochūdo-meguri – all this in the cotton robes of a pilgrim.

In 1924, Starr published his book, Fujiyama: The Sacred Mountain of Japan – even now, this is one of the few full-length books about Mt Fuji by a foreign author. In the frontispiece photo, we see him with Shibata Reiichi (1840–1920), the twelfth leader of Shintō Jikkōkyō, a Fuji-centred sect which traces its origins back to Fujidō, founded by Hasegawa Kakugyō (1541–1646). 

Frederick Starr with Shibata Reiichi.
Illustration from Fujiyama.

This suggests that Starr went to considerable efforts to research his book, which aimed to reveal “an attitude of mind” towards Mt Fuji and perhaps all sacred mountains. But the book is dedicated not to Shibata but to Sogabe Ikko. 

Portrait of Sogabe Ikko.
Illustration from Fujiyama.

Sogabe had guided Starr on all his ascents of Mt Fuji – the two had met at a study group, the Nōsatsu-kai. Sogabe loved Mt Fuji and had climbed it almost a hundred times, we are told, and he probably provided Starr with some of his more unique material. Sogabe had started writing his own book on Mt Fuji in 1919, with a view to summing up his lifelong researches into the mountain.

"Lake Gamanaka (sic) seen through the rift in clouds".
Illustration and original caption from Fujiyama.

Sogabe was generous with this knowledge. On August 31, 1923 he called on Starr, saying that he would like to show his manuscript to Starr. They agreed to meet again a month later and spend the whole day poring over Sogabe’s manuscript.

That meeting never took place: on September 1, the great earthquake destroyed Sogabe’s house along with most of Tokyo and Yokohama. Sogabe was burned to death while trying to rescue his manuscript from the fire that ensued. 

Monument to Frederick Starr, Mt Fuji Subashiri Route.

Starr survived the earthquake, his hotel in Yokohama having survived the initial shock, and lived on until 1933. There is a monument to him above the Sengen Shrine on the Mt Fuji Subashiri route. Yet so many questions remain unanswered. Who was Sogabe? What kind of a book was he trying to write? And should we see Fujiyama as an attempt by Starr to rescue something of Sogabe's legacy?

(Continued)

Endpapers of Frederick Starr's Fujiyama.

First steps to climbing (14): "needs the utmost coolness"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

In fact, it will be obvious that this ready alertness is especially necessary during Alpine ascents – it is the key to success with safety. Presence of mind in sudden emergency, such as the appearance of falling stones, is of tremendous importance.

"Hold tight! A sudden slip into a snow-masked crevasse on the Jungfrau."
Original caption and photo from First Steps to Climbing. 

There is one startling event which though an ever-present risk, seldom happens in snow and ice climbing. That is a serious slip on a steep slope. A whole party may be dragged out of their steps, and with unnerving suddenness all the probabilities of tragedy are present.

To arrest the downward rush great resourcefulness is needed. It is absolutely no use to try to stop oneself by plunging the pick end of the axe into a hard snow-slope. It will instantly be dragged from the hands and left up above.

The proper mode of arresting progress is to grip the head of the ice-axe firmly and lie on it about chest-high, meanwhile gradually using the pick as a brake. Whole parties have been brought to a halt by this seemingly simple method, which to apply in actual practice needs the utmost coolness and ready skill.

These latter traits, added to a sporting unselfishness, seem a heritage of the Briton, and their reality is never more in evidence than in the sport of mountaineering. Alpinists of all nations appreciate these points, and it behoves our countrymen to uphold the worthy and glorious traditions of the past.

References

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

Tales of past and present (3)

Continued: a talk about foreign explorers of Japan's mountains, then and now.

Of course, clubs are never the whole story – just as Kojima’s companion on Yari, Okano Kinjirō, never joined the JAC, so some foreigners had no interest in joining a club. One such lone wolf was Thomas Orde-Lees (1877–1958). 

Today we would call him an ‘adrenalin junkie’. After serving in the Royal Marines, he signed up for Shackleton’s disastrous Antarctic expedition. This sailed from London, in August 1914, just as Walter Weston was about to traverse Ōtenshō-dake.

Having survived the four-month wait to be rescued on Elephant Island, Orde-Lees joined the Balloon Corps on the Western Front. By the end of the First World War, he was an officer in the Royal Flying Corps, where he became an advocate for the use of parachutes. To prove their effectiveness, he once jumped from Tower Bridge into the River Thames.

Parachute pioneer: Orde-Lees plummets from Tower Bridge.

After the war, he came to Japan to teach parachuting techniques at the Imperial Navy’s Kasumigaura airbase. It was during this assignment that he thought of climbing Mt Fuji in winter – under the impression that he would be the first to do so. Clearly, he was ill-informed: that honour already belonged to Nonaka Itaru (1867–1955), who had reached the top as long ago as February 1895. And, very probably, other foreigners had preceded Orde-Lees too.

Like Nonaka before him, Orde-Lees failed on his first attempt, after he and a companion met with a “hurricane”. This was in January 1922. On February 10 they came back, dragging a home-made sledge made from the wreckage of a crashed aeroplane. 

Overnighting at the Tarōbō hut, they climbed the mountain on snowshoes as far as the sixth station and thereafter on home-made crampons screwed to the soles of their boots. The ice-axes came from a shop called Mimatsu at 8 yen apiece and they used parachute harness tape as a makeshift alpine rope.

Avro 504K, as cannibalised by Thomas Orde-Lees.
Image courtesy of Kovozavody Prostejov. 

The climb to the summit took twelve hours. To mark their high point, they tied to a rock near the summit hut the “aluminium foot-rest from the rudder-bar of an AVRO aeroplane …”

Avro 504K: arrow indicates the "aluminium footrest from the rudder-bar".

So there is a small mystery – has anybody ever found that “aluminium foot-rest” near the top of the Gotemba-guchi on Fuji-san? If so, I’m sure that it should be in a museum somewhere.

By the way, the account of these Fuji climbs was reprinted in Inaka vol 16, although it first appeared in the Japan Chronicle of February 19, 1922 – I doubt if Orde-Lees was a member of the MGK.

This was a somewhat frivolous digression. But there is a serious point to it. Orde-Lees’s Mt Fuji climb was a byproduct of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902–23). It was the military cooperation implicit in the Alliance that brought him to Japan. We like to think that our mountaineering floats somehow untethered above the lower world. But mountaineers are, in fact, swept along in the current of history like everybody else. 

Rock pinnacles on Myogi.
Plates from Douglas Freshfield's report on his Japan tour.
Courtesy of the Alpine Journal.

Speaking of that Alliance, between 1900 and 1923 no fewer than three of the British Alpine Club’s Presidents visited Japan, where of course the Japanese Alpine Club gave them a warm welcome. The most prominent, Douglas Freshfield (1845–1934) made a visit in October 1913 and climbed Myōgi. He too used Murray’s guidebook and consulted Walter Weston. Permit me to share some of his pictures…

(Continued)

First steps to climbing (13): "usually the amateur pays"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

After deciding on the Alpine district to be visited, the beginner's first step will be the choice of a guide. If the advice of some experienced friend is available, perhaps it may be possible to engage a good man in advance.

Downclimbing the Mönch.
Photo from G D Abraham, First Steps to Climbing.

The very best guides are often reserved a year, or at least a few months ahead, and with these the novice need not trouble. Very few, if any, of the guides are good teachers, but those of the highest class and famous specialists are perhaps worst of all in this respect. The only way to learn is to watch carefully every movement and method of the professional and note especially his methods of approach and selection of points of attack. Even on unknown mountains they seem instinctively to detect the weak places and formulate a route. The intelligent tyro will especially notice this, and questions asked regarding the why and wherefore of peculiar ways of tackling a big peak may be answered, though perhaps not always satisfactorily.

Failing a guide engaged in advance through an expert friend, the best plan is to book one after the arrival, and usually the hotel management will help in this, but some discretion is necessary. A personal interview is advisable, and a good deal can be judged from appearance. Usually a guide who speaks English, more or less, is nowadays to be obtained. Those who tout for jobs at the railway-stations are best avoided, and others who are part of the hotel staff should be chosen warily. 

The question of payment is sometimes troublesome, but this should be properly arranged and understood. In perfectly settled weather, if a really suitable man is available, an engagement for two weeks or more may be made at, for instance, 30 francs a day, whether any climbing takes place or not. This would include ascents of any of the ordinary peaks, and might, with very good fortune, involve six good expeditions in two weeks. 

A little extra payment might be required if certain special peaks or routes were included, and this question should be settled. The amateur would pay for the professional's food and drink during the excursions, and if the guide were engaged away from home, it should be understood who has to pay his hotel bill. Usually the amateur pays.

The other plan is to make no engagement, but pay for each peak by the tariff – that is, the official rate of payment fixed by the guides according to the standard of difficulty of the various peaks round each popular centre. For the average novice this latter plan is probably the best, and by using some tact, if a satisfactory guide is met with, he can be reserved for a succession of ascents. 

It may be noted that riches are not showered upon guides as in pre-war days, and there are more first-class men available. No longer does a wealthy climber hand his guide a sovereign to buy a pair of shoelaces and ask for no change.

References

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

 

First steps to climbing (12): "a sound way of retreat"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

Hints to cragsmen – climbing down: With the exception of one or two famous ascents with the late O. G. Jones, all the writer's rock experience has been gained as the leader on the rope. During this long and still active climbing career numerous useful wrinkles have been learnt and, in this chapter, these practical aids can be mentioned. 

"A study in small footholds": Kern Knotts Crack - Great Gable.
Photo from G D Abraham, The Complete Mountaineer. 

Undoubtedly there are two outstanding and vastly important maxims of advice for the beginner-these are, firstly, climb slowly, and secondly, rely on the skilful use of the feet, not the hands. At the start there is an almost irresistible tendency to “rush” a steep stretch of difficult rock work. The idea is well expressed in the words so often used – "I want to get it over!" This is entirely wrong. "Slow but sure" must be the slogan of the safe climber.

Each movement should be carefully considered. Up to a certain point the balance may be perfectly preserved in relation to the available holds; then an apparently good hold for the fingers may tempt the cragsman to forsake the slow balance method. There may be no support ahead, and he will find himself hung up in such a position that return is, to say the least of it, ungraceful and unpleasant. 

Each forward move should be made with slow deliberation, a change of holds only being made when the new situation is proved sound and promises continuity. Moreover, it is a reliable rule not to push ahead up any excessively desperate place where return is impossible. Some supervening difficulty may necessitate descent. The safe leader always reckons on having a sound way of retreat open.

References

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

First steps to climbing (11): "natural drain-pipes"

Advice for tyro mountaineers from the nineteen-twenties

Gullies might be described as chimneys on the biggest scale. They are the great rifts that split the faces of most precipitous mountains, and they vary in steepness considerably. Their interest lies mostly in overcoming the pitches which are formed where huge boulders, often as big as a small house, have fallen and become jammed between the walls.

The Devil's Kitchen (Snowdonia) with Llyn Idwal and Lake Ogwen below.
Photo from G D Abraham, The Complete Mountaineer.

Some of these are very impressive with the tremendous overhanging capstones looming overhead, often over a hundred feet high-and a deep black cave receding far under the great boulder. There are gullies of all shades of difficulty, and many abound in short, easy pitches most adaptable to beginners. They generally have the merit of giving a definite route, for having once entered into their recesses, any exit, except at the summit, may be more or less impossible.

Gully climbing has immense fascination and variety, but it should be unmistakably understood that it is almost entirely a development of British climbing. Gullies in the Alps are likely to be dangerous death-traps, for they are the natural drain-pipes down which the great peaks send their refuse. No climbing skill can avail against falling stones and ice; they are to be avoided. Apart from human agency, in British gullies the only falling thing usually encountered is falling water, though the writer's party once had a narrow escape from a falling bedstead. This was in the Great Gully on Snowdon, which has been spoilt by becoming the rubbish-shoot for the summit hotel.

References

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

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)