Awakening the Japanese Alps: Walter Weston's 1894 Hotaka Expedition

The Priest and the Forbidden Peaks

In the late Meiji era, the interior mountains of central Honshu remained shrouded in sacred mystery and ancient animist reverence. For over a millennium, Japanese interaction with high alpine summits had been governed by Sangaku Shinkō—the ancient mountain worship synthesizing Shinto and esoteric Buddhism. Ascetic yamabushi pilgrims scaled peaks like Mount Fuji, Mount Tateyama, and Mount Haku to perform purification rites and chant sutras, but the sheer granite crags of the Hida Mountains were feared as terrifying realms inhabited by fierce storm deities and vengeful spirits.

In 1888, a thirty-year-old English Anglican missionary named Reverend Walter Weston arrived in Japan. An experienced member of the British Alpine Club who had tested his mettle on the glaciers of Zermatt and Chamonix, Weston looked upon the jagged mountain silhouettes crowning the central provinces not with dread, but with incandescent wonder.

Where Japanese villagers saw sacred barriers, Weston saw a vast, untracked alpine playground comparable to the finest valleys of Switzerland. Resolving to explore these towering ranges during his missionary leaves, Weston set out to demonstrate that climbing mountains was an act of profound spiritual renewal, scientific discovery, and aesthetic communion.

The Secret Valley of Kamikochi

In early August 1894, Weston journeyed from Matsumoto into the remote upper valley of the Azusa River. At that time, Kamikochi was not the world-famous alpine national park it is today, but an isolated wilderness of primeval Japanese larches, crystal-clear glacial streams, and sulfurous thermal springs.

There, Weston met the man who would become his lifelong mountain brother: Kamijō Kamonji. Kamonji was a legendary local hunter who lived in a primitive timber shanty beside Myōjin Pond. Armed with a single-shot matchlock rifle, Kamonji roamed the vertical cliffs in pursuit of kamoshika (Japanese serow) and black bears. Though illiterate, Kamonji possessed an innate genius for reading snow bridges, detecting loose rock, and predicting approaching storms across the crags.

Weston and Kamonji formed an extraordinary partnership. Combining the Englishman’s technical rope craft, ice axe skills, and aneroid barometer with the hunter’s unrivaled wilderness instinct, the pair turned their eyes toward the supreme crown of the range: Okuhotakadake (3,190 m), the highest peak of the Hotaka Massif.

Storming Okuhotakadake

On August 8, 1894, Weston, Kamonji, and two local porters set out from their bivouac in the lower valley, ascending into the colossal amphitheater of the Karasawa Cirque. Towering walls of gray granite rose thousands of feet above them, still choked with winter avalanche snowfields despite the midsummer heat.

Leaving the porters at the snowline, Weston and Kamonji roped up to tackle the steep, shattered couloirs leading toward the main crest. Without the steel ladders and chains that aid modern hikers today, the climb was a demanding Grade III scramble across brittle granitic ledges and steep scree ramps. Kamonji moved with feline grace in straw waraji sandals, while Weston climbed in heavy nailed alpine boots.

Cresting the Shirade col, the pair confronted a knife-edge arête buffeted by fierce mountain gusts. Balancing along the narrow ridge, with sheer precipices dropping down to the Gifu forests on their left and the Nagano cirque on their right, Weston and Kamonji pulled themselves onto the rocky apex of Okuhotakadake at 3,190 metres.

Before them stretched an awe-inspiring vista: to the north rose the sharp spear of Mount Yari; to the east, across the sea of clouds filling the Kofu basin, floated the majestic symmetrical cone of Mount Fuji; and to the northwest loomed the menacing, tooth-like silhouette of Mount Tsurugi.

The Legacy of the Father of Modern Alpinism

Upon returning to England in 1895, Weston wrote his masterpiece, Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps, published in London in 1896. The book electrified Western geography and introduced the world to Japan’s high-altitude treasures. More importantly, Weston popularised the term ‘Japanese Alps’—originally suggested by English mineralogist William Gowland—solidifying the identity of the Hida, Kiso, and Akaishi ranges.

Weston’s passionate writings ignited a national awakening within Japan itself. Educated Japanese youths and scholars began flocking to the mountains not as religious ascetics, but as modern mountaineers seeking physical vitality and the romantic sublime. When the Japanese Alpine Club was founded in 1905, Weston was enthusiastically named its first honorary member.

Today, a bronze relief of Reverend Walter Weston stands enshrined in the forests of Kamikochi, where hundreds of mountaineers gather each June for the Weston Festival to honor the English priest who unlocked the heart of Japan’s alpine soul.