This book is a record of the youthful climbs in the Japanese Alps by Walter Weston, who is often regarded as the mentor of modern Japanese mountaineering.
Weston was born in England in 1861 and came to Japan in 1884 as a missionary. He returned to Britain in 1894, and this travel account describes the journeys he made during that first stay in Japan. Later, in 1902, he returned to Japan accompanied by his newlywed wife, Emily Frances, and lived in Yokohama until 1905 as a priest of St. Andrew’s Church. He came to Japan for a third time from 1911 to 1915, again residing in Yokohama.
This book was first published in English in 1896. Seven years later, a young man in Yokohama named Okano Kinjirō happened to come across a copy and was utterly astonished. The photographs included even showed Mount Yari, which he himself had struggled so hard to climb only that very summer.
News of this eventually reached Kojima Usui, and through his later friendship with Weston it is said that the movement leading to the founding of the Japanese Alpine Club began to take shape.
Weston encouraged the creation in Japan of an organization modeled after the British Alpine Club, and even after returning home he continued to send advice and letters of encouragement. Considering this, it is understandable that he came to be revered as the teacher of modern Japanese mountaineering and that the Weston Festival is still held every year.
Yet this book itself is nothing more — and nothing less — than the travel memoir of a mountain-loving young Englishman wandering through a foreign land. It was not written with the grand purpose later generations would attach to it, nor was it intended specifically for Japanese readers. Precisely because of that, his pure passion for the mountains comes through vividly, and his candid impressions of Japan at that time are deeply fascinating. I would like to write about the book itself together with some of my own reflections.
The first thing one notices is the difference between Japanese and British attitudes toward mountaineering at that time. In Japan, the idea of climbing mountains simply as a personal pleasure or hobby scarcely existed among the general public. As a result, wherever Weston went, people looked at him suspiciously and wondered why anyone would climb mountains at all. Were he and his companions searching for silver or copper deposits? Hunting for hidden treasure? Such were the assumptions people made.
The landscapes of the central mountain regions, the lives of the local inhabitants, and their customs are described in vivid and concise detail throughout the book. The prose is not ornate, yet its lack of exaggeration makes the reality of the time stand out all the more clearly.
Weston himself wrote:
“I have intentionally written this account in considerable detail because most of the regions through which I traveled lay far beyond the ordinary paths of men and were virtually unknown to the world. There I encountered magnificent and wild scenery wholly unlike the stereotyped images associated with Japan. At the same time, the ancient customs and superstitions preserved among the peasants — whose warm hospitality and delightful companionship I enjoyed — are also worthy of attention.”
As one continues reading his travel narrative, it becomes clear how closely he observed details of landscape and custom. Yet beyond that, he also grasped entire mountain ranges in broad perspective. From the summits he surveyed distant horizons in every direction, and he frequently commented on the quality and types of rock, revealing a solid grounding in geology.
The narrative begins with crossing Usui Pass, then proceeds to Karuizawa and the ascent of Mount Asama. From there it moves on to an exploratory attempt on Mount Yari, then to Mount Kisokomagatake and a descent of the Tenryū River, followed by Mount Norikura and finally the long-desired ascent of Mount Yari itself. Later come Mount Akaishi, a crossing over the Harinoki snow gorge, the climb of Mount Maehotaka together with Kamijō Kamonji, an ascent of Mount Fuji in May, another descent of the Tenryū River from Mount Ena, Mount Shirouma, and finally Mount Kasa, Mount Jōnen, and Ontake — mountains he managed to climb only after overcoming the superstitious resistance of local villagers.
Through Weston’s account one also gains a vivid understanding of transportation and road conditions in Japan at the time. Since this was only shortly after the beginning of Japan’s modernization, railways had only just begun to appear and did not yet extend into the provinces. Horse-drawn railway carriages and rickshaws were common. Roads were poor, and drivers and rickshaw men were often inexperienced, causing him many difficulties. In some places, he remarks, walking would have been easier. At the same time, however, he laments that as modernization advanced rapidly and old traditions disappeared in the name of convenience, people grew less genuinely hospitable toward foreigners.
Although Weston was often bewildered by the curiosity and confusion of villagers seeing a foreigner for the first time, he was impressed that even seemingly uneducated country people proved, upon closer acquaintance, to be remarkably polite and kind. He concluded that true refinement was not the monopoly of any particular social class. On the other hand, he also encountered dishonest or pretentious guides who were of little practical use, reminding him that people are much the same everywhere.
He comments as well on the looseness of timekeeping and the slowness of transportation services, observing that Japan lacked the concept that “time is money.” From the perspective of modern Japan’s precise sense of punctuality, such a world is almost unimaginable. Civilization may transform people’s sense of time itself, but in those days life still seems to have flowed at a slower, more relaxed pace.
Another topic he mentions repeatedly throughout the book is the plague of fleas in inns and mountain huts. As practical advice to travelers visiting Japan, he insists they should always carry flea powder. He was equally exasperated by the noisy revelry that continued late into the night and by the almost complete lack of privacy, with nothing more than a paper sliding door separating one room from another. Perhaps even today there are places in Japan where this still rings true.
Weston appears to have genuinely enjoyed Japanese cuisine and hot springs, mentioning them repeatedly throughout his journeys.
His mountaineering accounts themselves are remarkably restrained. He records objective facts without embellishment or self-dramatization, giving the writing a refreshing clarity.
At the Harinoki snow gorge he notes:
“The hard-frozen snow slope steepened to nearly thirty-eight degrees, and the hunters were reluctant to cross it.”
Elsewhere, beyond Gara Pass, he writes:
“Soon we were obliged to traverse a red-earth slope inclined at fully sixty degrees.”
In descriptions of steep rock faces, one senses that he positively enjoyed the climbing itself. Having already experienced rock climbing and glacier travel in the true European Alps, the rock ridges and snow gullies of the Japanese Alps — even snow-covered Mount Fuji in May — probably did not strike him as especially formidable. Instead, he describes slipping on moss-covered rocks in ravines and learning the effectiveness of straw sandals, even improvising by fastening straw sandals over his nailed climbing boots.
Among all of Weston’s climbs, the one that most captured my imagination was his ascent of Mount Maehotaka together with Kamijō Kamonji. Leaving Kamonji Hut, they climbed Maehotaka from its eastern face and descended the same day. The exact route is unclear, but since he mentions ascending the North Ridge, perhaps they climbed up and down around the Fifth or Sixth Col. (A translator’s note suggests that this was a route from the east wall to the North Ridge of Maehotaka, though surely it cannot have been the present-day East Face route, which would amount to genuine technical wall climbing.)
Even of this ascent Weston writes with characteristic understatement:
“The rocks here were steeper and harder than any I had previously experienced. We devoted all our strength to the climb, and for that very reason it was immensely exhilarating.”
For that era, it seems to me a truly remarkable achievement.
As mentioned at the beginning, this book records Weston’s very first climbing journeys in Japan during his youth. His wife does not yet appear in the story, nor is there any connection with the Japanese Alpine Club. Least of all could he have imagined that he would one day be honored as the mentor of modern Japanese mountaineering. Nor could he have foreseen that after spending a total of seventeen years in Japan, the country would become a kind of second homeland to him.
If one reads the book without attaching too much importance to the fame he later achieved, what emerges instead is the portrait of a warm-hearted young Englishman, overflowing with curiosity and powers of observation, who simply and genuinely loved the mountains.
English version prepared with AI assistance
(Originally written in Japanese)
Japanese version:
https://hifuka-otiboriroi.net/日本アルプスの登山と探検/