Mountaineering in Japan (2): "rocking to and fro"

Continued: Walter Weston's guide to alpine activities in Japan during the 1930s.

Flora: The flora of the Japanese Alpine regions is rich and varied, especially in the Northern mountains, with magnificent cryptomeria, various cypresses, giant birch, beeches, maples, oaks, &c.

The profusion and variety of Alpine flowers are of great beauty and interest. The most noticeable districts are: in the North Shirouma (Ō Renge) and Goshiki-ga-hara, near Tateyama Onsen and in the South, Kita-dake and Senjo-dake. At 9,000 feet may be seen Cyprepedium yatabeanum and the great purple C. Macranthon. Potentilla gelida is found on most of the highest summits, up to 10,500 feet; the splendid Shortia uniflora, a dark lily, Fritillarius kamschatensis, and the most magnificent Aquilegia akitensis at 10,000 feet. The Japanese soldanella has a far great range than the ordinary Alpine one, from 3,000 to 10,000 feet, both north and south.

Fauna: Of the fauna one sometimes comes across a large black bear, and chamois, this of less attractive build than the European variety. The golden eagle, the gorgeous copper pheasant in the lower forests, and nightingale are found, with absurdly tame ptarmigan on the higher ridges. In the clear streams of the granite ranges several varieties of trout are plentiful.

Fuji-San from Lake Yamanaka
Illustration from Walter Weston, The Playground of the Far East.

Fuji, Fuji-San, Fuji-yama, or (in poetry) Fuji-no-yama, although not geographically belonging to the mountain groups known as the Japanese Alps, occupies, as a mountain peak, such a unique position orographically, that in every sense it stands by itself in a land of mountains.

It rises, about 50 miles west of Yokohama, in one unbroken sweep from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to a height of some 12,395 feet, nearly 3,000 feet higher than any other peak in Japan proper, and overtopping all hills in its neighbourhood by upwards of 10,000 feet.

The ascent, in summer, presents no difficulty, as on each of the four recognized routes there are a number of huts used by pilgrim and others, at which simple accommodation may be had; the slope never exceeds 35 degrees and in some cases motor or other vehicles ply up to a height of 6,000 feet or over, through the forests or beyond.

The routes mentioned are Yoshida, N.E., Subashiri and Gotemba, nearly parallel, E.; Omiya, S.W. The first three are most convenient for travellers from Yokohama and Tokyo, while Omiya is mostly used by pilgrims starting from the famous shrine after which it is named, and is better situated for those coming from the direction of Kobe and Kyoto. It offers more shade than other routes, and it is a good plan to ascend by this and to cross the mountain so as to descend to Yoshida or Gotemba. In the cases of all these points there is communication with the railway (Tokaido line) by means of motors or buses.

An average time for the ascent will vary from eight to ten hours. An interesting walk midway to the summit is the Chūdō-meguri, the "circuit half-way up," the track passing round the mountain at a height varying between 6,500 and 9,500 feet. It is best taken by going to the left westwards, from about the 6th hut on the Gotemba route.

Guides or porters, belonging to guilds which have headquarters at the starting points named, can be engaged in advance, at a specified fee of $4 or so for the whole trip. There is also a small regular charge for a night's lodging when needed at the huts, but food should be taken by the traveller, though Japanese tea is always procurable.

Fuji can also be climbed outside the summer months, but for this special arrangements must be made. In good spring weather, when the mountain is but half-covered with snow, the ascent is full of interest and charm, and offers no particular difficulty to an experienced mountaineer.

In winter it is a more serious undertaking, and is best taken from Yoshida, although it can be done from other points. Proper Alpine outfit is indispensable, and ample food is needed. The weather is apt to be variable, few huts are open, and no skilled guides, as such, are available.

The ascent of Fuji in winter is essentially one regarding which the advice of the Japanese Alpine Club should be sought. A certain amount of winter skiing is to be had, usually, on the lower slopes.

Since the "Alpine" regions of Japan were introduced to the notice of the mountaineering world, chiefly by "foreign" mountaineers some forty years ago, radical and far-reaching changes have taken place. Mountaineering as a recreation has become perhaps the most popular of outdoor sports, and the youth of Japan has welcomed it with characteristic energy and thoroughness. Among its most active adherents are members of the Imperial Family, of whom Prince Chichibu has done excellent work in the European Alps, both in summer and in winter. The native enterprise has shown itself in the opening up of new routes, the provision of climbers' huts, the training and organization of guides, and in the improvement of the maps of special districts. In the whole "Alpine" region there are over 150 huts where previously none existed beyond a few scattered shelters mainly used by the staff of the Imperial Forestry Bureau, or by hunters and fishermen.

The Japanese Alpine Club: the Japanese Alpine Club, largely managed by climbers of experience in Europe and the Canadian Rocky Mountains, has a membership of some 800, while nearly all the principal universities and many of the larger high schools, have, like Oxford and Cambridge, mountaineering clubs of their own.

Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of the J.A.C. is the publication of a handbook for climbers, on the lines of a well-known Swiss model, entitled Yama Nikki ("a Mountain Diary"), probably the most thoroughly complete volume of its kind in existence. The information it contains as to routes, huts, the addresses of the various guides associations, equipment, &c., are full and invaluable, as are its important counsels on the varying conditions and differences of summer and winter climbing respectively. All the principal skiing localities, of which there are many, are indicated, and the necessary precautions to be adopted in procuring the use of the huts in them. While many of the summer routes lie mainly in the valleys, these are usually to be avoided in the winter owing to the danger of avalanches. It is unfortunate that this invaluable volume is printed only in Japanese, but the information it contains should by all means be consulted with the aid of one competent to read and to translate its contents. The officials of the Club are always most ready to assist fellow-mountaineers in every way. The Department of Imperial Railways itself organizes lectures and other means of popularizing mountaineering travels, and at the Central Railway Station in Tokyo may be found the headquarters of the Japanese Tourist Bureau (J.T.B.) which offers exceedingly useful information regarding travel transport, &c., all over the country.

The headquarters of the Japanese Alpine Club (in Japanese, Nihon Sangaku Kai) are 307 Fujiya Building, Kotohiracho, Shiba ku, Tokyo.

Apart from Fuji-San, there are fifteen peaks in Japan proper of 10,000 feet or over, while six others vary from 9,879 feet up to 9,950 feet. The altitudes here to be mentioned are based on the Survey of the General Staff of the Japanese Army, as revised in 1932 and found in the Yama Nikki ("Mountain Diary") of the J.A.C.

With regard to the height of Fuji-San, and perhaps also some other quiescent volcanoes, Professor John Milne, in his illustrated monograph on the mountain, has suggested that owing to the contraction of the eviscerated crater on the summit and other causes the actual height may vary slightly from time to time. His observations during a stay of ten days on the top of Fuji-san showed that during prolonged and excessive wind the upper part showed quite definite signs of rocking to and fro. This phenomenon is familiar to lighthouse keepers under such conditions in very exposed situations.

In now giving the details of mountain routes in the principal ranges of the Japanese Alps it should be pointed out that as three-fourths or four-fifths of the area of the country is composed of mountains and hills, it is only possible to deal with a selection of some of the most representative and interesting expeditions.

References

From Walter Weston's chapter on “Japan”, in Sydney Spencer (editor), Mountaineering: The Lonsdale Library Volume XVIII, London: Seeley Service & Co, 1934.

Mountaineering in Japan (1) : "to a height of 40,000 feet"

Walter Weston's guide to alpine activities in Japan during the 1930s.

The islands of Japan represent the crest of a vast mountain chain that rears itself from the profoundest depths of the Pacific Ocean to a height, in Fuji-san, of 40,000 feet. Its general characteristics show its close kinship to the contiguous mainland of Asia. The long sinuous island chain really represents the advanced frontier of the Asiatic continent, and the ocean bed between Japan and Korea is so shallow that a slight uplifting of it would admit of dry-land communication from the one to the other. 

The Fuji-Kawa
Illustration from Walter Weston, The Playground of the Far East.

The chief mountain ranges of Japan constitute no less than three-quarters of the total area, and in general formation consist of two main systems, the northern and the southern. The Northern runs south from Saghalin until it meets the Southern, which has entered from southern China and passed upwards through Formosa, and the two systems meet in the middle of the mainland of Japan. It is here, in the broadest part of the main island, that the wildest and deepest valleys are cleft and that the mountains rise to their loftiest heights in the ranges now known as Japanese Alps.

The meeting of these two systems has resulted in great geological upheavals, and a vast transverse fissure crosses the island through which a number of great volcanoes have burst their way. This fissure is known to geologists as the Fossa Magna, and forms a geological boundary between northern and southern Japan. The main features present marked contrasts, for while Northern Japan is comparatively low and open, the Southern division, especially in its central regions, exhibits the wildest and most romantic scenes in the county.

The chain of erupted peaks in the Fossa Magna forms the Fuji Volcanic Belt and is of great interest. It stretches southwards across Hondo (the "main island") from near Naoetsu on the Sea Japan, culminating in Fuji-San (or Fujiyama, san being the Chinese and yama the Japanese word for mountain). It then passes through the Hakone hills and the promontory of Izu into a curious island chain known as Shichito, "the Seven Islands of Izu." The most important of these peaks is Mitake, on the island of Oshima, familiar to travellers approaching Yokohama by sea from the west.

The main mass of the Japanese Alps lies between 35° and 37° N. latitude and the situation of its northern portion is almost identical with that of the Sierra Nevada of Spain. The south end of the range lies due west of Tokyo and Yokohama, from which it is readily approached. Both of these cities stand on the same latitude as Gibraltar and Malta. Its general outline and elevation are comparable to those of the Alpes Maritimes or of the Bergamasque Alps as viewed from the plains of Lombardy. An intimate acquaintance with its characteristic features justifies the observation of the late Lord Bryce that "there is probably not any other country that exhibits such an endless variety of natural beauty." The Japanese Alps include two main divisions which I have ventured to distinguish as the Northern and Southern Alps respectively; each has its own characteristic features.

The Northern range runs nearly southwards, from near Naoetsu, on the Sea of Japan, for upwards of 100 miles. It exhibits the greatest variety of form and outline. Great volcanoes, some as perfect cones, and others but shattered remnants of their original forms, alternate with granite peaks and towers, or the pointed porphyritic summits of an older age.

On the north-western limits, the cold winds from Siberia deposit the moisture over the warm currents in the Sea of Japan in the form of heavy snowfalls that frequently bury whole villages. Here, as in Hokkaido (Yezo) excellent skiing grounds may be found. No actual glaciers are seen at the present day, though on many of the highest ridges and in the more secluded ravines snow lies all the year round. In many of these districts snow-shoes and crampons known as Kana-kanjiki to the Japanese hunters and others using them are to be found.

Scattered all over the mountain ranges throughout Japan are numerous spas (onsen, or yuba) most frequently in the Northern Alps, at an altitude of about 5,000 feet. Some of these serve to determine the most popular climbing centres, since it is there that suitable accommodation is usually met with, and the waters have often considerable medicinal value. The best-known of these are Kamikōchi, Nakabusa, and Tateyama Onsen, all in the Northern Alps.

The Southern Alps mainly comprise an immense triangular mass about 50 miles in length enclosed by the famous rivers Tenryugawa on the west and Fuji-Kawa on the east, both of which empty themselves into the Pacific between Nagoya and Yokohama.

In this division there are none of the volcanoes that give variety to the northern range. But the mountain forms are more massive and Kita-dake (sometimes locally known as Kaigane, 10,534 feet) is the second highest peak in Japan proper.

This region is less familiar to mountaineers than the former, with its great forests and romantic glens. There are fewer onsen, and over hundreds of square miles hardly any human habitations are to be seen. This is the more noticeable, since the eastern foothills are not a day's journey west of Kōfu, one of the most progressive towns in Central Japan.

References

From Walter Weston's chapter on “Japan”, in Sydney Spencer (editor), Mountaineering: The Lonsdale Library Volume XVIII, London: Seeley Service & Co, 1934.

The Fall of Language from 3,463 metres

A perspective on Mizumura Minae’s provocative yet productive polemic.

The Jungfraujoch lies almost three and a half kilometres above sea level. Staring down from here into the cloud-filled bowl of the Konkordiaplatz, I saw that conditions were less than ideal for skiing solo over Switzerland’s largest glacier. A burly figure standing nearby must have read my mind. “Come with us,” he said, “we’ve got a rope.”

View towards Konkordiaplatz from the Jungfraujoch (3,463m).
Photo by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure.

On the train home, after a pleasant day’s ski-tour through the Bernese Alps, we fell into conversation. My benefactor turned out to be a prominent sekiwake of Basel’s alpinistic community. And he outed himself as a fan of Murakami Haruki, having read pretty much everything the author has published.

I start with this episode to underline that Murakami fans are everywhere (I’ve climbed the Mönch with another, also in so-so weather). But, world-renowned as he may be, the novelist doesn’t merit a flicker of recognition in Mizumura Minae’s The Fall of Language in the Age of English – in which, as far as I can see, she does not mention him by name, or even so much as hint at his existence. Well, this is a rum go.

Summit ridge of the Mönch: Murakami fans are everywhere.
Photo by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure. 

The original version of Mizumura’s book came out in 2008 with the title of Nihongo ga horobiru toki: Eigo no seiki no naka de – which might be rendered as the Fall of Japanese during the Era of English. Tens of thousands of copies were sold; the book ranked top on Amazon Japan and it won the Kobayashi Hideo Award, named for one of the Hyakumeizan author’s climbing companions. The English translation, with a slightly amended title, appeared in 2015.

Mizumura is refreshingly controversial. Starting with the observation that translations from a universal language (say, Chinese) helped to kick-start literatures in national tongues (say, Korean or Japanese), she asks what effect the new global universal language – English – will have on these national languages and literatures. And she argues that both the languages and the literature will find themselves impoverished.

The book starts with a flashback to an international writing program in Iowa. The experience is less than satisfactory. So far from being oppressed by the English language, many of the participants can barely communicate in it. So the time passes unprofitably for Mizumura, who is fluent in English having spent her high school and university years in the United States. After the program ends, she meets a friend who bemoans the current state of Japanese literature. It’s all crap, they agree.

The second chapter deals with the French language, and how it gradually lost its groove as an international language. Yet, when she entered Yale, it was French literature that Mizumura chose as a major, thus following in the footsteps of many a Japanese intellectual, including the Hyakumeizan author himself and at least two of his climbing companions, Kon Hidemi and the aforementioned Kobayashi Hideo. Alas, Mizumura concludes, French is now “in the same sorry camp” (her words) as Japanese.

Taking a high line on the Louwitor, Bernese Oberland.
Photo by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure. 

But perhaps the lady protests too much. Indeed, the title of her fifth chapter – "The Miracle of Modern Japanese Literature" – almost undercuts her argument. The thesis here is that the stress of encountering Western languages and literature forced the yokuzuna of Meiji and Taishо̄ letters to create a new way of writing. And in this they succeeded magnificently.

Everyone knows about Natsume Sōseki’s love-hate relationship with English literature – indeed, echoes of his travails in London have reached as far as this blog. And he probably voiced the predicament of Meiji-era writers more eloquently than most, lamenting that they had experienced a “sudden twist” away from their culture’s roots in a Sino-centric civilisation.

Mizumura shows that this deep engagement with the West extended across the whole literary landscape. Futabata Shimei, for example, who wrote Ukigumo (Floating Clouds), Japan’s first modern novel in 1887, was “thoroughly schooled” in Russian and its literature.

In the next generation, there was Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892–1927), who not only climbed Yarigatake in his youth but “read an astounding amount of English at an astounding speed”: he is said to have despatched an English version of War and Peace in four days.

And there was Nakazato Kaizan (1885–1944), who was an avid reader of Victor Hugo in English translation. Incidentally, his most famous work, the “long Buddhist novel” of Daibosatsu tōge (1929) gets a mention in the very first sentence of the relevant chapter in Fukada Kyūya’s Nihon Hyakumeizan.

As a result, writes Mizumura, “Japan became a nation so literary that it would have been the envy of all literature-loving people of the world – if only they had known!”. If only they had known? Japanese literature, Mizumura clarifies, finally attracted the world’s attention in 1968, a century after the Meiji Restoration, when Kawabata Yasunari won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

You could take issue with that last judgment. I mean, if the world only woke up to Japanese literature in 1968, Arthur Waley must have been wasting his time when he started translating The Tale of the Genji in the 1920s. What a mercy, then, that he burned up no more than twelve years of his life in completing this thankless task…

This quibble aside, Mizumura’s chapter on the sekitori of modern Japanese literature is a masterpiece – well worth the price of the book on its own. She has twice lectured on this subject at Princeton and it shows.

Crevasse zone on the Louwitor, Bernese Oberland.
Photo by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure.

However, the following chapter on “The Future of National Languages” ventures into a bit of a crevasse zone. Would someone like Sо̄seki bother to write literature in Japanese today, Mizumura asks – before suggesting that, oppressed by the worldwide sway of the English language, he might prefer to become a scientist.

Well, he might indeed. But, then again, he might equally well run a jazz bar in Tokyo for seven years, and do Japanese translations of short stories by Raymond Carver and Truman Capote, as well as of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and J D Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, among others, before kicking off a successful career as a writer in his own right …

The case of Murakami Haruki hints that the status of English as a universal language may not be wholly demoralising for writers in other tongues. But Mizumura doesn’t give much airtime to such thoughts. Rather, she suggests, the closer a language is to English, the greater the risk that the population will become more attuned to contemporary Anglophone culture than to its own heritage.

German is a case in point: “Because writing in English comes easily for users of Germanic languages,” Mizumura writes, “more and more writers might even be tempted to write novels, poems and plays in English with a world audience in mind.” Again, they might indeed. But a visit to any bookstore in the German-speaking world will quickly allay such fears.

Speaking of bookstores, your reviewer just last week dropped into the cramped but well-curated one in Terminal Two at London’s Heathrow airport. Needless to say, Murakami occupied a decent fraction of one shelf, amply supported by a slew of cat and bookshop-related fiction from other Japanese authors, to say nothing of the ikigai books in the lifestyle section. And, placed in pole position close to the entrance, was a table of books by newly translated Korean authors, including last year’s Nobel laureate.

You know, English-speaking writers might like to heed Mizumura-sensei’s parting advice to them, which is to try ‘walking through the doors of other languages’. Otherwise, with all this talent flowing in from Asia, they could well find themselves marginalised one of these days…*

References

Minae Mizumura, The Fall of Language in the Age of English, translated by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter, Columbia University Press, 2015.

*Note: a week after this post appeared, the Italian writer Vincenzo Latronico published a thoughtful opinion piece in the Guardian (online edition 8 August) entitled 'It's another form of imperialism’: how anglophone literature lost its universal appeal. According to Latronico, "the landscape described by Mizumura has drastically rearranged itself over the past few years, and the primacy of anglophone literature seems to have faded."

Reappraising the Abraham brothers (2)

Continued: they took mountain photography to a new level - but was it Art?

Their mentor's death did little to deter the Abraham brothers. Picking up where Owen Glynne Jones had left off, they published a climbing guidebook for North Wales in 1906. George developed into a strong leader in his own right, making first ascents in the Lakes and Scotland. 

The Pinnacle on Scafell.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

The guidebook also helped to launch George on his prolific career of mountain writing. And both brothers became family men and pillars of the local community: Ashley was first a member and then chairman of Keswick Council.

Climbing the Eiger: original caption reads "A safe pull".
Image from George D Abraham, Swiss Mountain Climbs.

They also continued their tradition of summer mountaineering holidays in the Alps, proving that they could wield a camera as stylishly in the big mountains as on their local crags. 

Climbing the Wetterhorn.
Image from George D Abraham, Swiss Mountain Climbs.

Although it's hard to believe that they used an Instanto to capture pictures like the crevasse mishap below – surely, by this time, they’d kitted themselves out with the kind of lighter, handier apparatus that the hard-driving Mrs Main had already adopted for en-route photography. But again the record remains silent on this point.

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

They certainly explored other photographic innovations. Like Mrs Main, they experimented with film-making before the First World War and in 1921 they helped to make a feature film based on a story written by the mountaineer/novelist A E W Mason – although here the brothers served as stand-ins for the actors during climbing scenes, not as cameramen.

Image from Ashley Abraham, Beautiful Lakeland (1912).

Meanwhile, Ashley had parlayed his mountain photography skills into a series of books celebrating the broader landscapes of the Lake District and North Wales. His command of lighting and composition invites comparison with the likes of Albert Steiner (1877–1965), whose moody exposures captured the dream-like light of Switzerland’s Engadine valley.

Image from Ashley Abraham, Beautiful Lakeland (1912).

Albert Steiner is an intriguing parallel here. For decades after his death, nobody in the fine art world took him seriously. After all, the Swiss photographer had started out as a baker’s son and apprentice and for most of his career he’d made his living as a commercial photographer, producing images of hotel rooms, post buses and whatever else his clients needed for brochures and advertising copy. It was only after a landmark exhibition of his landscapes in 1992, at the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, Switzerland, that the art world started to take him seriously.

View of the Cuillins from Sligachan, Skye.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

All this raises the question whether George and Ashley Abraham aren’t also overdue for a “Kunsthaus moment”. Back then, Mills & Boon hardly did their pictures justice. Shoehorned as sketchily printed plates into one of the romance publisher’s duodecimo editions, their photos have scant room to breathe. But what if the best of their images were digitally remastered, lavishly printed on fine paper, framed, and exhibited as artworks? Then we’d see something like a Steiner-esque transformation, I suspect.

If it does happen, please enjoy the exhibition. And remember you read it here first…

References

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

Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags: a portfolio of early rock climbing photographs by the Abraham Brothers, Heinemann 1975.

Iso Camartin, Peter Herzog and Ruth Herzog, «Du grosses stilles Leuchten»: Albert Steiner und die Bündner Landschaftsphotographie, Zürich, Offizin, 1992.

Reappraising the Abraham brothers (1)

They took mountain photography to another level – but was it Art? 

Back in March, I dropped into Jimbōchō, Tokyo’s used book district, on the first day of its annual festival. This yielded a musty copy of George D Abraham’s First Steps to Climbing, published in 1923 by Mills & Boon, Limited. Yes, that Mills & Boon – the back papers advertise the kind of titles that the publisher is still best known for, such as Miss Pretty in the Wood, Elizabeth Who Wouldn't, and Love and Chiffon…

The Abraham brothers, Ashley and George, in the 1930s.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

We digress. To share George Abraham’s quirky yet often pertinent climbing advice, this blog then posted a series of excerpts from his book, with the accompanying photos. Which prompted reader Stephen50 to put up some perceptive comments highlighting both the quality of the Abraham brothers’ photography and the existence of a biography, Camera on the Crags by Alan Hankinson.

Climbers in Easter Gully on Dow Crag (detail).
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

Intrigued, I reached for a copy of this genial and informative book, which explained just why the Abrahams were such skilled image-makers. For George (1871–1965) and his brother Ashley (1876–1951) were professionals, both born and bred. Their father, George Perry Abraham (1844–1923), founded and owned a successful photography business in Keswick, in the English Lake District – a business that, in turn, passed to Ashley’s son.

On Tryfan's Central Buttress.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

So they had already inherited their photographic smarts by the early 1890s, when they set about learning to rock-climb. This they did on their own bat, which probably explains why George Abraham opined in First Steps that “For a party of beginners the most effective plan, and that which really produces the best climbers, is to tackle the rocks unaided and rely on their own initiative” – a view not widely endorsed today.

Owen Glynne Jones climbing on gritstone.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

But what lofted the brothers into the big league of mountain photography was their partnership with Owen Glynne Jones (1867–1899). By profession a physics teacher in London, Jones was then at the forefront of the rock-climbing scene. A fluent writer, he was working on a climber’s guide to the Lake District, but needed somebody to make the photographs. In the Abraham brothers, he found just the team he was looking for. 

Alpinists on the way to the Fiescherhorn, Bernese Oberland.
Image from George D Abraham, Swiss Mountain Climbs.

From early 1897, for a brief two years, the brothers climbed with Jones in both the Lake District and North Wales. During that time, the brothers also went to the Alps for the first time, although not with Jones. They even talked with him about an expedition to Kanchenjunga. George Abraham advanced his climbing skills and made friends within the climbing community, while it was Ashley who more often than not tended the camera on narrow ledges.

An Underwood "Instanto".
Image by courtesy of antiquewoodcameras.com.

And what a camera! Manufactured by E & T Underwood of 130–2 Granville Street, Birmingham, the “Instanto” was little more than a mahogany frame supporting a leather bellows that could be racked in and out for focus. Shutter? Forget it: after propping the camera on a sturdy tripod, focusing onto a ground glass screen and inserting a dry plate, the photographer removed and replaced the lens cap for an estimated exposure time of, say, a second or more. By today’s norms, the name “Instanto” extravagantly violated any law of trade descriptions.

Climbers on Napes Needle (also styled the Aiguille du Nuque).
Image from Alan Hankinson's Camera on the Crags.

Yet, when viewed in the generously sized plates of Alan Hankinson’s book, the results speak for themselves. The compositions breathe a sense of classical repose, enforced by those lengthy exposure times that froze the climbers by necessity into statuesque poses. But this was only a part of it. 

On the Cuillin Ridge, Skye.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

A typical Abrahams photo never fails to bring out the shadow detail, revealing the texture and detail of the rocks in an opulent, luminous granularity. This they achieved partly from their attention to lighting – diffuse, if possible, and ideally from a three-quarter angle, over the photographer’s shoulder. But development times and tricks must also have played a role. Unfortunately, these are lost to history: the brothers wrote little or nothing about their photographic techniques. 

The Cioch, Skye.
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

On a good day, the Abrahams could give even photographic masters such as Georges Tairraz of Chamonix (1868–1924) a run for their money – like themselves, Tairraz represented the second generation of a photographic dynasty. Although any recognition for their skills from that direction was distinctly back-handed. Several of their photos, records George in First Steps to Climbing,  “appeared surreptitiously in Alpine centres with French titles, as though they portrayed bits on the Chamonix aiguilles. The Napes Needle was unmistakable, even titled as the Aiguille du Nuque…” 

On Pillar East Face (detail).
Image from Alan Hankinson, Camera on the Crags.

Alas, the Abraham brothers' rock-climbing apprenticeship with O G Jones was all too short. In August 1899, their mentor fell to his death along with his three guides from the Ferpècle Arête of the Dent Blanche. The accident horrified the climbing world, even leaving its mark on a famous Japanese novel....

(Continued)

Tales of past and present (7)

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

So what is going on now? A big difference today is the internet and social media – this may reduce the need for clubs, because you can find partners and get all the information about hiking and climbing conditions online, via Yamap and Yamareco. Anyway, I'm not aware of any international hiking and mountaineering club like the Mountain Goats of Kobe at the moment.

Foreigners are still climbing technical routes in Japan, perhaps more than ever now that guiding services exist. One key source of information is a website run by Tony Grant (right), who works for the British Council. He learned to rock climb in the UK, and followed that up with alpine climbing in Poland. When he came to Japan – this was nearly two decades ago – he started climbing with other expatriates, but then started investigating Japanese climbing guidebooks.

In the end, he started publishing his own route descriptions on Climb Japan!, his English-language website, and he has published two ebooks with a selection of classic routes – including Yari’s Kitakama One, Chūōryō and Nanryō in Tanigawa-dake’s Ichinokura-sawa, Shirouma Shuryō, and other favourites.

Another big change since the 1990s is the Nihon Hyakumeizan boom among foreign climbers. For many, the first inspiration came from Lonely Planet’s Hiking in Japan, published in 2001, which had a text box describing the Hyakumeizan concept – one of the authors was Craig McLachlan, a New Zealander who climbed all 100 mountains in the summer of 1997 and published a book about this feat.

The Lonely Planet Guide is long out of print, but that doesn’t matter. Thanks to blogging – in Japanese, English and German and probably other languages too – there is a wealth of information online. One of the first such websites on the scene was Wes Lang’s Hiking in Japan, which has all the information you need for each of the 100 mountains. And you'll find more excellent guidance in the links in this blog's sidebar, including David Lowe's Ridgeline Images, Emma Goto's hiking blog, Willie Banff's On Higher Ground, and Ben Hentschel's Meizan Memories.

Wes Lang tops out on his 100th mountain in 2008.

Wes teaches English writing at two universities in the Kansai – he lives on Ikoma-yama, of course, one of the highest places in the region – and he completed his round of the Hyakumeizan in 2008, the first American to do so. So his website is a key resource for Hyakumeizan hunters who don’t read Japanese.

But that wasn’t enough for Wes – feeling that there was a gap after the Lonely Planet guide went out of print, he teamed up with an English friend, Tom Fay, and compiled a detailed guide to hiking in the Japan Alps, North, South and Central. The book also covers the four main routes on Mt Fuji. It came out in 2019 and is now the only current guidebook in English to Japan’s high mountains.

As we have seen, guidebooks can be influential. The one by Satow and Hawes set Walter Weston on his way, while Lonely Planet fomented a mini-Hyakumeizan boom among foreigners. (By the way, some foreign mountaineers are already pursuing the 200 and 300 famous mountains). It’s too early to say what influence Fay and Lang will have, but please watch this space. Something will happen for sure. 

And this brings us to the future.

Some parts of the future won't look so different from the past, I would imagine. Earlier, I mentioned the foreign botanists who travelled the mountains in the Meiji era. Well, they still do.

For example, there is a very rare birch tree found only in the Chichibu mountains and nowhere else in the world. I read that botanists at Oxford University and Tokyo University are working together to preserve it – the seeds are being kept at several different places, including Kew Gardens in London – the very same institution where your founder member Takeda Hisayoshi came to study from 1910 onwards.

Then again, mountaineering is always being re-imagined. “Mais des rêves, il en faut toujours. Je les préfère aux souvenirs,” said Gaston Rébuffat (1921–1985)( But dreams we must have and, all the time, I prefer dreams to memories).

You could spend a lifetime climbing Japan’s classic routes and the Hyakumeizan. And, for most of us, that’s more than enough. At the same time, a few pioneers now and again dream up a completely new way to read the landscape. I’m thinking here of Tanaka Yōki, who completed the Hyakumeizan with “human power” only. Or Shimizu Tetsuya, who soloed all the Kurobe gorges and made a winter traverse of the Shiretoko Peninsula.

It will be interesting to see how foreign climbers too choose to exert their imaginations in the mountains of Japan….

References

A Japanese-language version of this talk was given at the Ryokusōkai on 29 March 2025 at the offices of the Japanese Alpine Club. It drew on the following sources, among others:

Freshfield, Douglas, “A Playground at the East End: Rambles in Japan”, Alpine Journal, 1914.

Ion, Hamish, “Mountaineering in Japan: British Pioneers and the Pre-war Japanese Alpine Club” in Hugh Cortazzi (ed), Britain & Japan Biographical Portraits, Vol IX, Amsterdam University Press, 2015.

Kuwada, Gonpei, Biography of Benjamin Smith Lyman, Tokyo: Sanseidō, January 1937.

Mizuno, Tsutomu, “Meiji shoki no Nihon ni okeru gaikokujin no tozan katsudo ni tsuite”, JAC Yama, 1976 (series).

Murray Walton, W. H., Scrambles in Japan and Formosa, Edward Arnold, 1934.

New York Times, "Saving a Rare Tree Worlds Away", 26 October 2015.

Nunokawa Kin’ichi, “Nihon no yama to gaikokujin” in Hito wa naze yama ni noboru no ka, Taiyo Bessatsu, no 103, Autumn 1998.

Nunokawa Kin’ichi (ed), Me de miru Nihon no tozanshi, Yama to keikoku-sha, November 2005.

Starr, Frederick, Fujiyama: the Sacred Mountain of Japan, Chicago: Covici-McGee, 1924.

Weston, Walter, The Playground of the Far East, John Murray, 1918.

And many thanks for a great deal of invaluable advice and guidance from Ohmori Hisao (Japanese Alpine Club), Iain Williams (Toyohashi Alpine Club), Wes Lang and Harumi Hood (Fukui Alpine Club).

Images and ink (55)

Image: Frontispiece from Upon that Mountain (1943) by Eric Shipton.

Ink: Eric Shipton's thoughts on "Large Expeditions" particularly those of the 1930s to Everest, from Chapter Eight of Upon that Mountain. 

Finally, the disadvantage of large expeditions lay in the fact that the necessity of raising big funds made it difficult to control publicity. The expeditions became invested with a glamour foreign to the fundamental simplicity of the game. It was quite natural that mountaineers should wish to climb the highest peak in the world, or at least be interested in the project. But unfortunately Everest’s supremacy among mountains appealed to the popular imagination of a record-breaking age, and gradually the expeditions began to receive a press publicity out of all proportion to the value of the undertaking, and certainly out of keeping with what used to be regarded as "the best traditions of mountaineering”…

I knew a man with a strong claim for a place on the expedition who said that he wanted to climb Everest so as to make a big name for himself, which would enable him to use his influence in the cause of world peace. A worthy ambition, no doubt, but surely it would have been more profitable to devote his energies to the study of political economy rather than to proving himself a mountaineer with an exceptionally large lung capacity or whatever it is that enables a man to climb to great altitudes. This is one example among many of an extraordinary distortion of values which has its roots in the opening of a short-cut to fame. Were it not so laughable it might well be resented by those who find in mountaineering a deep aesthetic pleasure.