11 - Mountaineering in Japan: British Pioneers and the Pre-war Japanese Alpine Club

Summary

INTRODUCTION

THE FAMOUS IMPERIAL Hotel at Kamikōchi opened in 1933 and like Banff Springs Hotel or Chateau Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies was designed to allow guests to marvel at the mountains from a base of comfort. The opening of the Imperial Hotel also demonstrated to the foreign tourist or visiting dignitary that the appeal of Japan was not restricted only to its temples, gardens, geisha and modern cities but also extended to the beauty of its mountains and alpine flora.

British mountaineers had a significant influence on the development of climbing as a leisure sport in Japan and on Japanese climbers associated with the Japanese Alpine Club Nihon Sangakkai). The shadow of Walter Weston (1860–1940) looms large over the first years of the Alpine Club and the early Japanese leaders in it owed much to him not only in Japan itself but also in being a conduit for them to the British Alpine Club and the Swiss Alps. The direct influence of British climbers declined after 1923 but indirect influence continued.

The ideas of John Ruskin (1819–1900) about the mountains struck a responsive chord with the Japanese. Walter Weston ended a newspaper article on ‘The Ascent of Kaigane san’ in November 1902 with a quotation from Ruskin: ‘The mountains seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedral: full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons for the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper.’ Weston made many references to Ruskin in his writings on Japan. He even called Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927), the author of Nihon Fukeiron (Japanese Landscape) and the second honorary member of the Japanese Alpine Club after Weston, the ‘Japanese Ruskin’.

Kojima Kyūta (Usui, 1873–1948), one of the founders of the Japan Alpine Club, was greatly influenced by an appendix to Nihon Fukeiron which led him to climb Yarigatake in 1902 (only to find that Weston had already climbed it as early as 1894).