Mount Kinpu(2,599m)is one of the most beautiful peaks in the Okuchichibu Mountains of central Japan.
A few faded photographs lie on the table before me.They were taken on Mount Kinpu with Mount Fuji rising quietly in the distance. My hair was still thick then, and my waist had not yet begun to thicken with age. In one photograph I am standing happily on the great rock at the summit, Gojo-iwa.
It feels like yesterday, yet more than forty years have passed.
The photographs were taken during the Golden Week holidays of May 1971, when I climbed Mount Kinpu in the Okuchichibu Mountains. A neighborhood friend and another companion who knew the mountains well invited me along. Looking back, that trip was when my climbing life truly began.
At that time Japan was in the midst of its first great mountaineering boom, and Kinpu Mountain Lodge was crowded with climbers. Everything I saw and heard felt new and exciting. Veteran mountaineers spoke of their adventures, and I listened with quiet amazement.
I still remember the dim interior of the hut, where a large daruma stove burned brightly near the entrance. The lodge was run by Kesaō Hayashi, affectionately called “Oyaji” by the climbers who loved this mountain. His Saku dialect sounded rough at first, but his eyes were warm and welcoming.
Over the years I returned to Mount Kinpu from time to time. Sometimes we helped carry supplies up the mountain and even welcomed the New Year at the lodge. But as the years passed, life gradually became busier, and my visits grew fewer.
Looking again at these old photographs, I am struck by how quickly time passes. Nearly half a century has slipped by. I have not visited Mount Kinpu for many years, and I have heard that Mr. Hayashi, whom we once thought indestructible, passed away in an accident.
The great rock of Gojo-iwa remains unchanged.
Yet everything around it has changed.
As an old Chinese poem says:
Year after year the flowers remain the same,
yet year after year the people change
Perhaps someday I will walk again along the gentle path from O-darumi Pass to Mount Kinpu. And yet part of me hesitates, as if returning to a hometown after many years away.
Maybe it is better to keep the Kinpu of those days quietly preserved in my memory.
For me, Mount Kinpu will always remain a special mountain — the mountain that first led me into the world of mountains.
English version prepared with AI Assistance.
(Originally published in Japanese on Apr.il 29,2011.)
五丈岩
Standing on Gojo-iwa, the symbolic rock of Mount Kinpu.
富士山をバックに
Mount Fuji seen from Mount Kinpu, May 1971
仲間たち
with my mountain friends