Images and ink (37)

Image: Mt Fuji from Lake Kawaguchi, woodprint by Yoshida Hiroshi

Ink: Translating Mt Fuji, from Sanshirō by Natsume Soseki

Sanshirō had completely forgotten about Mount Fuji. When he recalled the Mount Fuji he had first seen from the train window, having had his attention called to it by Professor Hirota, it had indeed looked noble. There was no way to compare it with the chaotic jumble of the world inside his head now, and he was ashamed of himself for having let that first impression slip away. Just then Hirota flung a rather strange question at him.

"Have you ever tried to translate Mount Fuji?"

"To translate it... ?"

"It's fascinating how, whenever you translate nature, it's always transformed into something human. Noble, great or heroic.”

Sanshirō now understood what he meant by translate.

"You always get a word related to human character. For those poor souls who can't translate into such words, nature hasn't the slightest influence on them when it comes to character.”

Thinking there was more to come, Sanshirō listened quietly. But Hirota cut himself off at that point.

Somewhat related post: Mountains of character

Images and ink (36)

Image: "Pollinger breaks through", photo by Edward Whymper, from Whymper’s Scrambles with a Camera, edited by Peter Berg, former Hon. Archivist of the Alpine Club

Ink: Poem by I A Richards, the literary critic and alpinist, to his wife, Dorothy Pilley

Recall the Epicoun:

Night, welling up so soon,

Near sank us in soft snow.

At the stiff-frozen dawn,

When Time had ceased to flow,

- The glacier ledge our unmade bed -

I hear you through your yawn:

"Leaping crevasses in the dark,

That's how to live!" you said.

No room in that to hedge:

A razor's edge of a remark

Images and ink (35)

Image: Asama erupts in 1783, from Illustrations of Japan (1822), by Dutch trader Isaac Titsingh. He wrote: “The flames burst forth with a terrific uproar ... Everything was enveloped in profound darkness ... A great number of persons were consumed.”

Ink: On Asama-san, from Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):

Together with Aso in Kyūshū, Asama is the very model of a Japanese volcano. It has trailed smoke from its summit for untold ages, it was born in a roiling cloud, and its plume is far-famed to this day. While in normal times it emits only the faintest white wisp of vapor, Asama occasionally throws restraint to the winds and blows its stack. In just the last two decades, there have been more than 1,800 eruptions, large and small. This adds up to an amazing frequency of outbursts over the volcano’s lifetime. One of the most famous was the eruption in the third year of Tenmei (1783), when the lava surged forth for several kilometers, ravaging the foot of the mountain with fire. The famous Oni-Oshidashi, or Devil’s Flow, is a relic of that episode.

Image courtesy of the Bodleian, Oxford: the “Volcanoes” exhibition is on at the Weston Library from 10 February to 21 May 2017.

Related post: Serious steam

Images and ink (34)

Image: A view of Fusiyama  from from Jules Trousset's Nouveau dictionnaire encyclopédique universel illustré, Paris: La Librairie Illustrée, 1885-1891

Ink: An early European account of Japan's top mountain, from John Swan's Speculum Mundi; or, A Glasse Representing the Face of the World (second edition, Cambridge, 1643):

"In Japan there is a mountain called Figeniana, which is some leagues higher than the clouds. And in Ternate among the Philippine islands there is a mountain, which (as Mr. Purchas in his pilgrimage relateth) is even angry with nature because it is fastened to the earth, and doth therefore not onely lift up his head above the middle Region of the aire, but endeavoureth also to conjoyn it self with the fierie Element. And of the mountain Athos between Macedon and Thrace, it is said to be so high, that it casteth shade more than thirty & seven miles. Also the mount of Olympus in Thessalie is said to be of that height, as neither the winds, clouds or rain do overtop it. And (although I omit others of exceeding height) it is also written of another mount so high above the clouds, that some who have seen it do witnesse that they have been on the top of it, and have had both a clear skie over their heads, and also clouds below them pouring down rain and breaking forth with thunder and lightning; at which those below have been terrified, but on the top of the hill there was no such matter."

Image: courtesy of Old Book Illustrations.

Images and ink (31)

Image: Ski-mountaineers below the Mönchsjochhütte, Bernese Oberland, at dawn (photo by Alpine Light & Structure)

Ink: From "Mountains (For Hedwig Petzold)" by W. H. Auden:

 ".... Those unsmiling parties,
Clumping off at dawn in the gear of their mystery
For points up, are a bit alarming;
They have the balance, nerve,
And habit of the Spiritual, but what God
Does their Order serve?"

"Love of mountains"

Excerpt from the short story "Love of mountains" by Uno Kōji

The Amasake tea house, Hakone, woodprint by Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915)

And yet, what strange things mountains are. Why do they seem to possess such charm, not only for those born in villages surrounded by mountains, but even for people like myself, born and raised in a grimy city? And I believe that I am no exception, either.

Who do you think could walk, on a clear autumn or winter day, in the Yamanote district of Tokyo without stopping and gazing with astonishment at the Chichibu and Nikkō mountain ranges or at the purple slopes of Mount Fuji and Mount Hakone emerging suddenly between the houses and the flatlands? Few indeed!

According to a certain European scholar whom I read recently, this feeling stems from the intimacy with mountains that our primitive ancestors knew and passed down to us through the subconscious from generation to generation.Seen in this light, you see, I do not mislead you gentlemen when I say that the pleasure of looking at the snow-clad mountains across the lake from the western window in the inn was akin to the nostalgia of seeing one's home village again after a long absence.

Later, I was surprised to learn that those mountains, which seemed to be at least ten thousand feet high, were, next to Mount Fuji, the highest mountains I had ever seen.

Reference

“Love of mountains” (Yamagoi) by Uno Kōji, in Love of Mountains: two stories by Uno Kōji, translated by Elaine Gerbert, University of Hawaii Press, 1997.

Images and ink (29)

Image: View of Azumino and Jōnen-dake, woodprint from the Hyakumeizan series, by Kogure Shinbō.

Ink: On Jōnen-dake, from Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):

Unlike most of the remoter peaks in the Northern Alps, the beauty of the scenery around Jōnen's base matches that of the mountain itself. This is yet another reason for artistic souls to acquaint themselves with it. ...  Seen in winter season from the train that runs between Matsumoto and Ōmachi through the fields of Azumi, Jōnen is the lambent, glittering pyramid soaring above the foothills. Every time I see this sight, I vow to myself that I will climb the mountain again in the coming year.

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Image: View of Amakazari-yama, Sosaku woodprint, artist unknown

Ink: On Amakazari-yama, from Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):

A mountain should leave an impression on one’s heart, somebody has said. Certainly, my memories of a mountain are all the deeper if it has to be attempted several times, rather than succumbing at first nod. For me, Amakazari is that kind of mountain.

Three takes on Harinoki Pass

Images-and-ink accounts of a historic mountain crossing

Climbing a snow valley at Harinoki, woodprint by Yoshida Hiroshi (1926)

I. From A Handbook for Travellers in Central and Northern Japan by Sir Ernest Mason Satow and A. G. S. Hawes (1884)

From Nagano to Toyama over the Harinoki Pass.

The greater portion of the following itinerary and of the description given below must be regarded as approximate only, the difficulty of keeping communication open across so rugged a country being peculiarly great. There is no possibility of crossing the pass before the yama-hiraki, or "mountain opening", on the 20th June. Even during the summer months, communication is often entirely interrupted, and none but the most experienced mountaineers can hope to succeed in forcing a way for themselves.

Difficulty is sometimes experienced in obtaining the services of hunters to act as guides, the Harinoki-toge being now seldom crossed even by the natives, and the huts formerly existing on the way being nearly all destroyed, whilst the central portion of the original track has, owing to avalanches and landslips, been practically effaced. Still, the route remains one of the grandest, as well as one of the most arduous, mountaineering expeditions in Japan.

II. From A Diplomat In Japan Part II: The Diaries Of Ernest Satow, 1870-1883, edited by Ian Ruxton

July 23. Left Noguchi at 5 a.m. The clouds gradually rose, and disclosed Yahazugatake, Rengedake or Gorokudake. Jiigatake and Tsubeta or Tsumeta, going from left to right. The Harinoki pass, over which we go, is just north of Rengedake Pass, through Oide, which is on the left bank of Takazegawa and across a stream which does not flow out of the three lakes. Then over a moor covered with woods for a long distance.

Hemerocallis flava (Wikipedia)

Ex-voto on trees, either inscribed "In honour of the mountain god'', or else two rusty iron spear heads, this kind of thing several times. Left the valley of the Takaze and continued up that of the Kagawa at the head of which our pass lies. Immense quantities of Funkia ovata, Hemerocallis flava, Magnolia hypoleuca. Through over-luxuriant brushwood, tall umbellifers and itadori over twelve feet high to the house at Shirazawa, where one can easily pass the night.

Here the river has to be crossed to the right bank, and the path goes on continually ascending thro' woods; large adenophera and yellow Tricyrtis (?) abundant; proceeding on, we shortly crossed the bed of the torrent. Here I found a (species of?) dianthus in quantities, a large arenaria and a hypericum.After this a splendid specimen of Lilium cordifolium in full flower, over six feet high, and another tall lily, unknown.

Lilium cordifolium (source ?) 

We then came to the hut called Kuroishizawa, where is an excellent little stream of pure cold water. Some time after this we arrived at the foot of the snow, and started boldly on it, but after a while, perceiving a path on the bank, we betook ourselves to it again, & ascended until said path disappeared under the snow. At this point, which is 5,500 feet above the sea, found Schizocodon Soldanelloides [ko-iwa-kagami], two kinds of vaccinium Diewilla in bud and a bed of what is Glaucidium palmatum. Birch just struggling into leaf.

Schizocodon Soldanelloides (Wikipedia)

We ascended the snow to a point where it seemed to end, and took our lunch, about 6,500 feet. After this, we did a little more snow, and found ourselves on a very steep zigzagging path, which led up to the summit ridge by the side of the snow, which filled the bottom of a narrow watercourse. Great variety of new & curious species along this path & and most of all at the top, anemones. Ranunculus, saxifrage, vacciniums. Height about 7,500 or 8,000 ft. It began to rain. We had been nearly I0 hours getting to this point, being much kept back by the baggage coolies …

Roofs at Ohmachi: looking towards Harinoki-toge
(illustration from Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps)

III. From Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps, by Walter Weston (1896)

During the first few years after the path – such as it was – was opened, several parties of foreign travellers, including Satow, Chamberlain, Atkinson and others, crossed the pass without much difficulty. Soon, however, the ravages of those influences we call the tooth of time began to tell; avalanches and landslips, with the heavy autumn rains, before long had battered the track out of all recognition, and the Harinoki-tōge became a mere wreck of its former self. For practical purposes, it was soon abandoned – indeed, almost buried – and its epitaph has been already written Tōge fuit….

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Image: View of Mt Fuji, by Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950)

Ink: Preface to "Fuji-san" (2012) by Randy Taguchi:

What do the Japanese cherish and protect as a spiritual sanctuary? For a great many people, the answer is Mount Fuji. 

Mount Fuji occupies a strange and wondrous place in the Japanese imagination. When you set your eyes on its shining, majestic beauty, you feel a sense of gain for some reason. You can't help but tell someone that you saw the mountain today, and that it was lovely to behold. The beauty of Mount Fuji lifts your spirits, telling you that everything is all right, telling you to choose life. I wonder how many lives have been saved in this way. 

How many Japanese hearts Mount Fuji has inspired with hope for so long now. I wrote this anthology of stories as an expression of my veneration and appreciation for this life-affirming mountain; it is my personal tribute to Fujisan. 

Even as the times change, Mount Fuji continues to remain divine and awe-inspiring throughout the ages. We keep looking up at it with genuine gratitude in our hearts. And this simple act, I believe, is in itself a true way to pray.

Images and ink (25)

Blue afternoon: image by Alpine Light & Structure

Image: Hakusan seen from Kasa-ga-dake, Japan Northern Alps

Ink: From One Hundred Mountains of Japan, by Fukada Kyuya

Many readers will have seen from one or other of the mountaintops of central Japan how, far to the north, Hakusan appears to float on a sea of clouds. And, I wager, the sight woke in you a sense of elegance with an undertone of loneliness.

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Image: Torii at Murodo shrine, Hakusan of Kaga, October 2014

Ink: Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchiking Japan, by Will Ferguson

My second ride of the day took me to Matsuyama City The vehicle was the same type of boxed truck I had ridden in Kyushu, but instead of pachinko machines it contained the clippings and debris of flowers and an aroma so strong it gagged me. It was like being trapped in an elevator with Aunt Matilda of the excess perfume.

The driver was a stocky man with flyaway silver hair, and, in one of life's quirky little coincidences, his name was Saburo. "But my family name is Nakamura," he said. "Nakamura Saburo. No relation to Emon." He was on his way into Matsuyama City to meet his daughter Etsuko, who was flying in from Kobe. I was a big man he said, slapping me on the chest.

Had I climbed Mount Fuji yet? Yes, I said, I had. And then, in my typical suave and bon mot way, I repeated the witticism about how it is a wise man who climbs Mount Fuji once, and a fool who climbs it twice.

There was a long pause. And then slowly, deliberately, Saburo said, "I have climbed Mount Fuji three times." Oh. "Well," I said, "I guess that would make you a ... a wise fool." He roared with laughter. "Yes!" he said, not in agreement, but in a sort of Eureka! way, as though that were the formula he had been looking for to sum himself up. ''A wise fool," he said, and smiled to himself with that special affection eccentric people often have for their own foibles.

"I have climbed every mountain in Japan," he boomed. "Every mountain!" "Every mountain?" I said, offering him a chance at abridging this bald statement. "Every mountain," he said and proceeded to list them. It was a long list. "Mountains put us closer to the gods," he said. "Japan is a land of thirty thousand million gods! Atop the mountains, the sky and the land meet. The gods are there. I have met the gods."

He actually said that: I have met the gods. He was either flamboyant, passionate, or mad. "Really?" I said. "The gods? What did they, ah, look like? Were they like ghosts or could you touch them?" He gave me a look of sorrow and exasperation, and said in one extended sigh, "The gods are the mountains. They aren't real in the way you say. The gods exist in the act of climbing a mountain, a sacred mountain."

He shook his head and gave up. We drove awhile, surrounded by the smell of flowers no longer present (much like the gods themselves, I imagine).

He shifted in his seat, and then, again with a sigh, decided to take another stab at it. "I climb mountains, right?" Yes. “And mountains are closer to the gods, right?" Yes. "In fact mountains are gods." He waited until I nodded before he continued. "So when I – we, anyone – even you – climb a mountain, climb it with sincerity, the gods –"

He looked across at me. I smiled back in what I hoped was an attentive way. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but changed his mind. The theology lesson was over. I never did figure out if he had actually met the gods – like a close encounter of the divine kind – or if he was just speaking figuratively. He didn't seem like the type of man to resort to metaphors, he was too rooted and no nonsense.

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Image: On Arashima-dake, Fukui Prefecture

Ink: Cheryl Strayed on mountains, from "Wild", a memoir of the Pacific Crest Trail:

"As I ascended, I realized I didn’t understand what a mountain was, or even if I was hiking up one mountain or a series of them glommed together. I’d not grown up around mountains. I’d walked on a few, but only on well-trod paths on day hikes. They’d seemed to be nothing more than really big hills. But they were not that. They were, I now realized, layered and complex, inexplicable and analogous to nothing."

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Image: View of Mt Fuji from Mannenbashi, Fukagawa, by Andō Hiroshige (1797-1858)

Ink: Dazai Osamu on the appearance of Mt Fuji, from "One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji" (1939):

The appearance of Mt Fuji as one sees it from an apartment in Tokyo has little to recommend it. In winter, there's a good view of the mountain, this little white triangle sitting on the horizon, that's it there. Not a big deal, just a kind of Christmas cake. Careening perilously to the left, it looks like a stricken warship that's starting to slip, stern-first, beneath the waves. 

 One winter, three years ago, somebody brought home to me an ugly truth - something I found quite unthinkable. Completely distraught, that night, in my apartment, I sat alone putting away glass after glass. I just drank; I didn't get a wink of sleep that night. At daybreak, I went to the bathroom and there, through the grille over the window, I caught sight of Mt Fuji, small, pallid, and heeled over somewhat to the left. I'll never forget this view of Fuji. 

Outside, I heard a bicycle rush by on the asphalt street - it was the fishmonger and I heard him say to himself, with a shiver, that Fuji was clear this morning because of the cold. As for me, I was inside in the dark, running my hand over the window, and crying my eyes out. I hope never again to experience anything like this.

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Image: Mt Fuji with flying clouds by Sasajima Kihei (1906-1993)

Ink: Dazai Osamu on the apparent height of Mt Fuji, from "One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji" (1939):

"Fujiyama, the glory of Japan": if foreigners find it "wonderful", this is because we've told them so a thousand times, so that Mt Fuji as become a sort of dream vision for them. But suppose you first caught sight of the mountain without first being subjected to all the hype - naively, in all innocence, mind like a blank sheet, as it were, what would you make of it then? Nothing would be for sure. It's a rather small mountain, after all. Yes, small in comparison with its base. Given the length of its base, Mt Fuji should be one and a half times as high. 

Only once has the mountain looked high to me, and that was when I saw it from the Jikkoku pass. That was a memorable day. The summit being smothered in clouds, I traced the lines described by the lower slopes and made a guess at where exactly they would meet above. Then the clouds parted and I realised how wrong I'd been. There was the summit, with its blue-shaded tints, at least twice as high as I'd imagined it. But rather than surprise, I felt a sort of frisson and burst out laughing. "Well, Fuji had me there," I thought. 

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Image: Harajuku in the 1830s, not as it is now, by Andō Hiroshige.

Ink: Dazai Osamu on the angles of Mt Fuji, from "One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji" (1939):

The slopes of Mt Fuji converge at an angle of eighty-five degrees in the prints of Hiroshige, and at eighty-four degrees in those of Bunchō. Yet a glance at the Army General Staff map is enough to establish that the east-west slopes, in fact, come together at an angle of one hundred and twenty-four degrees. For the north-south slopes, the angle is one hundred and seventeen degrees. 

Not that Hiroshige and Bunchō are doing anything very extraordinary; in almost any artistic representation of Mt Fuji, the angle formed by its slopes is shown as very acute, transforming the summit into something slender, aery and insubstantial. Hokusai indeed narrows that angle down to thirty degrees, creating a veritable Eiffel Tower. 

In reality, though, Mt Fuji forms a rather obtuse angle; it is a mountain of gentle slopes. With those flanks of one hundred and twenty-four degrees in one direction and of one hundred and seventeen degrees in the other, there is nothing particularly lofty or spectacular about this mountain. 

It seems to me that, were I in India or some other faraway country, and an eagle took me up in his talons and dropped me off on the coast of Japan somewhere near Numazu, the appearance of this mountain wouldn't in the slightest degree impress me.


More about the angles of Mt Fuji on this blog: Behind the curve

Images and ink (19)

Image: Night view of Mt Fuji by Kobayashi Kiyochika.

Ink: Canto X, 1943 Mt Fuji poem by Kusano Shimpei, translated by Leith Morton:

Japan's symbol
Even at night doesn't sleep.

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Image: Auspicious Mt Fuji by Kataoka Tamako (1905-2008).

Ink: On Mt Fuji, from Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):

The phrase "hachimen-reirō", meaning "graceful in all its aspects", was coined with Fuji in mind. Its form keeps its beauty whether viewed from north or south, east or west. All other mountains have their quirks, from which they draw their individual charm. But Fuji is simply vast and pure. In fact, I'm tempted to call it magnificently vulgar. Yes, would-be intellectuals might want to say that such starkness is tantamount to vulgarity. In the end, though, we all have to submit to this magnificent vulgarity.

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Image: Kodachrome view across Tanzawa mountains to Mt Fuji from Tō-no-dake

Ink: On Tanzawa, from Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):

Today's mountaineers, though, tend to shun places that are deeply associated with some historical personage. Instead, they favor untouched mountains, still in the state of nature. So leaving Ōyama somewhat in a class of its own, they prefer to take the ridge paths of Tō-no-dake, Tanzawa-yama, and Hiru-ga-dake or to follow the valleys that cut into these mountains. 

That said, people have been climbing Tō-no-dake from nearby villages for centuries. Until it collapsed in the Great Kantō Earthquake, they used to venerate a huge rock near the summit. Some sixty or more feet in height, this was known as the Black Buddha. 

The town of Sagami was traditionally much given over to games of chance and it seems that every year on the fifteenth of May a procession of gamblers would wend their way up Tō-no-dake and hold a lively ceremony there.

Images and ink (15)

Image: "The foot of Hodaka-dake" by Ōshita Tōjiro (1870-1911)

Ink: On Hodaka-dake, from Nihon Hyakumeizan (One Hundred Mountains of Japan) by Fukada Kyūya (1964):

This shows that Hodaka has attracted reverence as a holy mountain from ancient times. Its ruggedness, however, meant that people preferred to adore it from a distance rather than make pilgrimages to its summit. Hodaka is so rugged, indeed, that it remained inviolate long after the summits of nearby Yari and Kasa-ga-dake succumbed to pious monks. 

It was not until the summer of the fourteenth year of Bunka (1817) that Takashima Shōtei, a doctor from Hodaka village in Azumi-gun, visited the mountain with a friend and sketched its topography. But judging from the written account that he left, the pair did not reach the summit...