Birth of the Japanese Alpine Club: Kojima Usui and the Soul of Mount Kita

The Intellectual Awakening of Meiji Alpinism

At the turn of the twentieth century, Meiji Japan was undergoing a monumental cultural transformation. As Western science, literature, and philosophy reshaped Tokyo’s universities, a new generation of Japanese thinkers began seeking a modern spiritual connection with their homeland’s natural landscapes. Among them stood Kojima Usui, a young executive at the Yokohama Specie Bank who was destined to become the intellectual architect of Japanese mountaineering.

Kojima was deeply influenced by European Romanticism, the poetry of William Wordsworth, and the mountain philosophy of John Ruskin. In an era when most Japanese still regarded mountaineering as an archaic superstition practiced by wandering hermits, Kojima believed that scaling high peaks was the supreme artistic and intellectual pursuit of the modern era—a synthesis of physical daring, geographic science, and poetic reflection.

Inspired by Reverend Walter Weston’s expeditions, Kojima resolved that Japan required its own national alpine institution, staffed not by foreign explorers, but by passionate Japanese climbers dedicated to surveying and celebrating their nation’s mountains.

The Conquest of Mount Kita

Before organizing a national club, Kojima sought to test his philosophy against the most formidable peak in the Southern Alps: Mount Kita (Kitadake, 3,193 m), the second-highest mountain in Japan.

In late July 1905, Kojima and a small party of mountaineering companions traveled to Yamanashi Prefecture. Entering the isolated Noro River gorge, they ascended through dense birch and hemlock forests to the base of the massive Kitadake Buttress—a towering 600-metre vertical rock wall of folded metamorphic rock that dominated the upper valley like a colossal gothic cathedral.

Climbing through the steep, boulder-strewn couloirs of the Shiraneo cirque, the party struggled against torrential summer downpours that transformed mountain gullies into roaring cataracts. Above the timberline, surrounded by rare white Kitadake-so alpine flowers, they reached the wind-swept knife-edge ridge of Shirane Sanzan.

On July 28, 1905, Kojima stepped onto the 3,193-metre summit of Mount Kita. As the storm clouds parted in the morning light, the entire island of Honshu seemed to spread out beneath his feet. Directly across the basin, rising majestically above a sea of white cumulus clouds, stood Mount Fuji. Standing on that lofty peak, Kojima penned the words that would define a movement: ‘The mountain does not belong to the ascetics of the past, nor to the cartographers of the state; it belongs to the free soul who climbs for love of the heights.’

The Historic Assembly at Seiyōken

Returning to Tokyo energized by his triumph, Kojima mobilized his fellow climbing intellectuals. On the evening of October 14, 1905, seven visionary men assembled in a private banquet room at the historic Seiyōken restaurant in Tokyo’s Ueno Park.

Among those gathered were Kojima Usui, literary scholar Jūji Tanabe, cartographer Takazo Uno, and alpine botanist Torataro Takeda. Together, they drafted the charter for the Sangaku-kai (The Alpine Society, later officially renamed the Japanese Alpine Club). Kojima was elected as the inaugural president. In a unanimous motion of international gratitude, the society elected Reverend Walter Weston as its first honorary member.

The newly formed club immediately launched Sangaku, a peerless alpine journal dedicated to publishing scientific surveys, expedition logs, botanical discoveries, and lyrical alpine essays. Under Kojima’s inspiring leadership, the Japanese Alpine Club expanded from a modest gathering of seven scholars into a prestigious national institution that would spearhead the exploration of every major peak in Japan and eventually launch historic first ascents across the Himalayas and the Canadian Rockies.

Through Kojima Usui’s visionary pen, mountaineering in Japan had become an enduring art form.