At mid-morning – it’s been a moderately long drive – we pass a stupa dedicated to world peace by a local monk and park the car.
It seems that Nichidatsu Fujii, who was from Aso City, built more than seventy of these giant reliquaries around the world, in Europe and America as well as in Asia. Alas, judging by current events, that number may not yet have sufficed.
A whiff of sulphur greets us as we get out of the car. But just in case we haven't noticed, the sign at the trailhead gets straight to the point: “Release of volcanic gas (S02: sulfur dioxide) has been continuing around Mt. Aso. Be ready to protect yourselves individually with full understanding of the risk from volcanic gas.”
A nearby row of grave markers reinforces the message: accidents can and do happen around here.
Our ridge is like the scaly back of some gigantic sea beast. We weave to and fro, seeking out a line before we realise there’s a series of painted yellow arrows to guide us. We’re working our way upwards on solid lava flows: nothing but black rock, except for a patch of withered yellow grass here and there.
The heat and the stench intensify as we struggle upwards. Flies buzz round us. And now we can see where the fumes are coming from – the roiling clouds of acidic vapour spilling over a ridge crest to the right. Although Aso’s main crater is still kilometres away, it must sit exactly upwind of us.
Like the mountain in Dante’s Purgatory, the slopes ease a bit as we gain height. When a headwall starts to loom above, we decide it’s too hot to think about right now and sit down for lunch. I must be having a bad day: having forgotten my water bottle on our hosts’ kitchen counter, I now discover that my bento box has leaked into my pack. It’s still delicious though: Hirai, the local bentoyasan can only be recommended.
The Sensei passes over a “bakudan” (bombshell) rice ball to supplement the bento – goodness, do I really look so debilitated. This too goes down gratefully. After lunch, a cool breeze starts to blow, dispelling the sulphurous fumes, and we pick up the pace.
When we arrive in the shadow of the headwall, the yellow arrows direct us rightwards, up a ramp like Mt Asama’s famous J-band. Judging by Canto IV of his Purgatory, Dante must have been here too:
Squeezed in between the tight walls of the pass,
we struggled upward through that broken rock,
using our hands and feet to climb the ground…
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Illustration by Gustave Doré for Canto IV of Dante's Purgatory |
A few hundred metres more takes us to the summit ridge. The breeze strengthens as we walk over to Takadake’s trig point – there doesn’t seem to be a shrine up here. Perhaps the scenery is too inhuman even for a god. Then we walk carefully over the boot-shredding lava edges to the descent path.
Everyone has visited Aso-san before – heck, I even cycled across the massif in my student days – yet it’s still impossible to get a grip on this volcano’s dimensions. Mote-like figures on a ridge between us and the steaming crater dramatise the gargantuan scale.
A series of descending ridges bring us to the crest above the main crater. It’s still venting nonchalantly to itself, the fumes thinning and thickening almost as if the beast is breathing. Occasionally, a mushroom of vapour writhes silently upwards and drifts off with the wind.
I stand there enthralled until a sulphur-laden gust blows my hat away. Probably one shouldn’t hang about here too long. Dilapidated shelters along the concrete-surfaced path bear witness to an eruption in 1958 that did for twelve of Aso-san’s admirers.
And over yonder, like a line of monuments, are the pillars of the Mt Aso Ropeway, now abandoned. After starting up in the same year as the eruption disaster, it managed to keep operating for half a century or so, in despite of acidic gases, ash falls and earthquakes. But the volcano won in the end.
The Sensei and our host are already far down the path. I hurry after them, putting as much distance as possible between me and that monstrous crater at my back.
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