The founding of the Japanese Alpine Club: What its Meiji-era climbers set out to do

Mountains before modern recreational climbing

Today people climb for sport, pleasure and many other reasons. In Meiji-era Japan, recreational mountaineering took shape alongside older ways of going into the mountains.

Mountain worship had long drawn people to sacred peaks such as Fuji, Hakusan and Tateyama. Ascents known as tōhai brought religious practitioners and lay pilgrims into the mountains. Some of those traditions continue today.

People also entered the mountains to hunt, cut timber, mine and guide travellers. Late nineteenth-century mountaineering added new institutions and motives, including climbs for recreation and exploration.

Books, international encounters and local climbing networks all helped this new activity take shape.

Shigetaka Shiga and Nihon Fūkeiron

In 1894 the geographer Shigetaka Shiga published Nihon Fūkeiron, a study of Japan’s landscapes. It became an important book for readers discovering mountaineering.

Shiga described landforms, volcanic activity, climate and scenery from the perspective of physical geography. The book also offered readers a way to think about mountain landscapes as places to visit and study.

Shinshu University Library’s exhibition notes that the first edition sold out in three weeks and the book went through fifteen editions. Its reach helped bring mountain scenery to a wide readership.

One reader who took inspiration from the book was Usui Kojima, who became the first president when the club established that office in 1931.

When Usui Kojima met Walter Weston

Usui Kojima, banker and climber

Usui Kojima (1873–1948) was born in Takamatsu under the name Kyūta Kojima and grew up in Yokohama. He worked for the Yokohama Specie Bank and wrote about literature and mountain travel. He also collected and studied Japanese prints and Western engravings.

In 1902 Kojima and his friend Kinjirō Okano reached the summit of Mount Yari. Kojima’s interest in climbing had already been shaped by Shiga’s book.

Weston’s advice on forming a club

Kojima and Okano came into contact with Walter Weston, a British Anglican missionary and mountaineer. Weston’s Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps had appeared in 1896 and introduced readers abroad to Japan’s mountains.

Weston encouraged the Japanese climbers to form a club along the lines of Britain’s Alpine Club. That advice offered a model for organizing a shared interest in mountains.

Kojima and others began working toward a club of their own. Their contacts among naturalists, writers and climbers helped them turn the idea into an organization.

October 14, 1905: The first meeting

The club traces its founding to a meeting at Fujimi-rō in Tokyo on October 14, 1905. The Japanese Alpine Club marks it as its founding date. Seven people are recorded as the founders.

The seven founders

The Japanese Alpine Club’s biographical records identify these seven people.

1. Usui Kojima, also known as Kyūta Kojima, was a banker, writer and climber who became the club’s first president.
2. Nihei Takato compiled an early encyclopedia of Japanese mountains and became the club’s second president.
3. Hisayoshi Takeda was a botanist and later the sixth president. His father was British diplomat Ernest Satow.
4. Shizuka Kawada, later known as Shizuka Yamakawa, was active in natural history and went on to teach and lead Musashi High School.
5. Chikamitsu Umezawa studied physics, collected plants in the mountains and later taught at the army artillery school.
6. Takazō Takano studied alpine butterflies and was active in the natural history society’s Yokohama branch.
7. Kazuma Jō was a lawyer and Tokyo city councillor with an interest in wild plants.

Several founders were members of a natural history society. Collecting and studying plants gave them reasons to travel into the mountains and helped shape the early club’s interest in research.

The name and early membership

The group began as the Sangaku-kai, or Alpine Club, and adopted the name Japanese Alpine Club in 1909. Accounts differ about the initial membership count. Shinshu University Library’s exhibition gives 116, while the club’s chronology lists 393 at its founding. Both document the emergence of a growing organization.

Sangaku and the era of exploratory climbs

The first issue of Sangaku

In April 1906 the club published the first issue of Sangaku. Its opening statement presented the Alps as a place for scientific, literary and artistic work and set out an ambition to make mountaineering more widely known in Japan.

The journal made room for reports of climbs and studies of the mountains. Its archive is a record of how climbing, natural history and writing developed together.

Exploring the Japanese Alps

The years around the club’s founding are remembered as an era of exploratory climbing. Members made and documented traverses in ranges such as the Hida and Akaishi mountains, working with people who knew the local terrain.

• 1909. The club’s history records Masao Udono’s first traverse of the Hotaka–Yari ridge.
• 1909. Kojima, Takato and their party crossed peaks in the Akaishi range.
• 1909. The club formally adopted the name Japanese Alpine Club.

Written accounts gave later climbers a way to learn how routes connected and what terrain the parties had encountered.

Honorary members Weston and Shiga

The club recognized Weston as its first honorary member and Shiga as its second. Its chronology records Weston’s nomination in 1910.

Weston’s example, Shiga’s writing and the founders’ own exploration were distinct influences. The club gave those interests a place to meet.

More than a century of work

The organization continues as a public-interest incorporated association known in English as the Japanese Alpine Club (JAC). It works through regional branches and committees and maintains links with mountaineering organizations abroad.

The club’s historical and current activities span several areas.

• Expeditions and international exchange. Its chronology records Yūko Maki’s first ascent of the Eiger’s east ridge with Swiss guides in 1921 and the club-led expedition that made Manaslu’s first ascent in 1956.
• Training. Club committees and branches organize events and courses for different levels of experience.
• Publishing and archives. The club publishes Sangaku and makes historical issues and other records available.
• Conservation. Its members and committees take part in mountain conservation projects.

The club marked its centenary in 2005 and published its centenary history in 2007. It made the book available online as it approached its 120th anniversary in 2025.

The founding in brief

The Japanese Alpine Club’s founding marks an important moment in the growth of organized recreational mountaineering in Japan.

• 1894: Shiga publishes Nihon Fūkeiron and draws attention to Japan’s landscapes.
• 1902: Kojima and Okano climb Mount Yari. Contact with Weston encourages work toward a club.
• October 14, 1905: Seven founders establish the Sangaku-kai.
• 1906: The club publishes the first issue of Sangaku.
• 1909: The club adopts the name Japanese Alpine Club, and members document major traverses in the Japanese Alps.
• 2025: The club marks 120 years of activity.

A climb can begin with a book, a conversation or curiosity about the land. For the Meiji-era founders, those interests led to a club whose records still show how they explored and made sense of the mountains.