Japanese Alps

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Lore & Background

The Japanese Alps have a long history before William Gowland established this name. They have been used as a place of ascetic practice for Buddhist monks and Shugenja since ancient times. From the 1600s to the 1800s, samurai officers of the Kaga domain travelled deep into the Hida Mountains with local hunters and farmers as guides to preserve the timber of the mountains and continued to create maps recording ridges, valleys and vegetation. This survey is called Okuyama-mawari (奥山廻り). Even now, it is very difficult to cross the steep Hida mountains, one of the world's heaviest snowfall areas, in winter. Therefore, it is considered a historical event in Japan that in the winter of 1584, daimyō Sassa Narimasa's forces crossed over the mountain range over Zara Pass and Harinoki Pass. This event is called 'Sarasara-goe' (さらさら越え) derived from Sassa and Zara Pass. However, these Hida Mountains surveys did not seem to have been inherited by modern Japanese mountaineers who trekked through the mountains as a sport. As Kojima Usui later recalled, 'in those days,... no one knew even the names of the mountains, much less their locations or elevations. To go mountaineering was literally to strike out into the unknown country.'

Reader's Guide

The Japanese Alps encompass the Hida Mountains, the Kiso Mountains, and the Akaishi Mountains. These towering ranges include several peaks exceeding 3,000 m (9,843 ft) in height, the tallest after Mount Fuji. The highest are Mount Hotaka at 3,190 m (10,466 ft) in the north area and Mount Kita at 3,193 m (10,476 ft) in the south area. William Gowland, an English geologist, first thought of this swath of terrain as forming a single coherent landscape, comparable to the European Alps. Gowland explored several parts of the ranges in the 1860s, being the first documented foreigner to climb two peaks in the Alps, Mount Yari and Mount Norikura. About twenty years after Gowland's explorations, Reverend Walter Weston explored the ranges himself with Gowland's notes. Weston was led up many mountains by Kamijō kamonji, a mountain guide living in Kamikōchi. Weston ascended Mount Shirouma, Mount Jōnen, Mount Kasa, Mount Hotaka, and other minor mountains. In 1907, Yoshitaro Shibasaki and others succeeded in climbing Mount Tsurugi, which is said to be the last unexplored peak in Japan and the most difficult to climb. On this occasion, they found the ornaments of a metal shugenja cane and a sword on the top of the mountain. A scientific investigation later confirmed that the ornaments were from the late Nara period to the early Heian period, proving Mount Tsurugi had already been climbed by shugenja more than 1,000 years ago. From the 1960s to the 1970s, transportation infrastructure improved dramatically: the Komagatake Ropeway opened in 1967, the Shinhotaka Ropeway opened in 1970, and the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route fully opened in 1971.

Did You Know?

• The name 'Japanese Alps' was coined by English archaeologist William Gowland, originally referring only to the Hida Mountains.
• In the winter of 1584, daimyō Sassa Narimasa's forces crossed the Hida Mountains over Zara Pass and Harinoki Pass, an event called 'Sarasara-goe'.
• Mount Tsurugi, considered the last unexplored peak in Japan, was climbed in 1907 by Yoshitaro Shibasaki and others, who found a metal shugenja cane and sword from the late Nara to early Heian period.
• As of 2019, there are seven active glaciers in the Japanese Alps, the first of which were confirmed in May 2012 by the Japanese Society of Snow and Ice.
• A memorial plaque for Reverend Walter Weston is located at Kamikōchi, a tourist destination known for its alpine climate.