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25-560: The name was coined by English archaeologist William Gowland , and later popularized by Reverend Walter Weston (1861–1940), an English missionary for whom a memorial plaque is located at Kamikōchi , a tourist destination known for its alpine climate . When Gowland coined the phrase, he was only referring to the Hida Mountains , but it now also applies to the Kiso Mountains and Akaishi Mountains . The Japanese Alps has

50-767: A chemist and as a metallurgist at the Broughton Copper Company from 1870 to 1872. However, in 1872, at the age of 30, he was recruited by the Meiji government of the Empire of Japan as a foreign engineering advisor at the Osaka Zōheikyoku , the forerunner of the Japan Mint . Gowland began work in Osaka on 8 October 1872 on the three-year contract that was typical of many of the foreigners employed to aid

75-488: A collection of souvenirs from Buddhist temples. Gowland was also an avid collector of Nihonga -style Japanese paintings. On 31 December 1900, Stone 22 of the Sarsen Circle fell over during a storm, taking with it a lintel . Following public pressure and a letter to The Times by William Flinders Petrie , the owner Edmund Antrobus agreed to allow remedial engineering under archaeological supervision. To manage

100-889: A consultant to the Imperial Japanese Army , helping to establish the Osaka Arsenal for production of artillery . In 1883, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun (4th class) by the Japanese government. During his spare time in Japan, Gowland enjoyed mountaineering , making the first recorded ascent on several peaks of the Japanese Alps , a name which Gowland coined and which was published in 1888 by Basil Hall Chamberlain in his Japan Guide . The name

125-508: A long history before William Gowland established this name. The Japanese Alps have been used as a place of ascetic practice for Buddhists monks and Shugenja since ancient times. From the 1600s to the 1800s, samurai officers of the Kaga domain travelled deep into the Hida Mountains with local hunters and farmers as guides to preserve the timber of the mountains and continued to create maps recording ridges, valleys and vegetation. This survey

150-419: A number of routes which approach world class long routes. It is recognised in Japan as "the" premiere mountaineering peak in winter. Although dangerous, its death toll is a small fraction of those who have died on Japan's much smaller, but more lethal Tanigawa-dake . The earliest first ascent of Mt. Tsurugidake was by Ikuta Nobu  [ ja ] in 1907. However, upon reaching the summit, Ikuta discovered

175-500: A time for the pouring and the setting of concrete . Despite these difficulties, he established that antler picks had been used to dig the stone holes and that the stones had been shaped on site. His work both identified the 'Stonehenge layer', a thin stratum of bluestone chips that sealed many of the non- megalithic features at the site, and proved that these chips predated the standing stones. Gowland died in London on 9 June 1922 at

200-554: Is called Okuyama-mawari ( 奥山廻り ). Even now, it is very difficult to cross the steep Hida mountains, one of the world's heaviest snowfall areas, in winter. Therefore, it is considered a historical event in Japan that in the winter of 1584, daimyō Sassa Narimasa 's forces crossed over the mountain range over Zara Pass and Harinoki Pass. This event is called "Sarasara-goe" (さらさら越え) derived from Sassa and Zara Pass. However, these Hida Mountains surveys did not seem to have been inherited by modern Japanese mountaineers who trekked through

225-709: The Kinki region . Upon Gowland's departure from Japan in 1888, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, 4th class, and a 3,000-yen bonus from then- Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi . Once back in England, he published numerous works about his researches in Japan and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society . He donated many of the artefacts that he brought back to England to the British Museum , as well as

250-549: The Kiso Mountains (木曽山脈) and the Akaishi Mountains (赤石山脈). These towering ranges include several peaks exceeding 3,000 m (9,843 ft) in height, the tallest after Mount Fuji . The highest are Mount Hotaka at 3,190 m (10,466 ft) in north area and Mount Kita at 3,193 m (10,476 ft) in south area. Since Mount Ontake is far from the Hida Mountains, it is generally not included in

275-1194: The Kiso Mountains , are located in the Nagano prefecture . It includes the mountains Mount Ena , Anpaiji mountain (安平路山), Mount Kusumoyama (越百山), Mount Minamikoma , Mount Utsugi , Mount Hōken , Mount Kisokoma , Kyogatake (経ヶ岳), etc. The Southern Alps, also known as the Akaishi Mountains , span Nagano , Yamanashi , and Shizuoka prefectures. It includes the mountains Mount Tekari , Mount Hijiri , Mount Akaishi , Mount Arakawa , Mount Shiomi , Mount Nōtori , Mount Aino , Mount Kita , Mount Hōō , Mount Kaikoma , Mount Senjō , Mount Nokogiri (Akaishi) , etc. Geographers previously believed that no active glaciers existed in Japan. The Japanese Society of Snow and Ice found this to be false in May 2012. By studying surface flow velocity and snow patches in Mount Tsurugi, they found that certain perennial snow patches have large masses of ice, upwards of 30 meters in thickness. This causes these snow patches to be classified as active glaciers, and as of 2019 there are seven active glaciers in

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300-490: The Mount Shirouma , Mount Jōnen , Mount Kasa , Mount Hotaka , and other minor mountains. Weston first documented the two main mountain systems distinguishable by geological structure. The first of these he called the "China system" due to its connection with southeast China from just south of the Japanese archipelago. The second was called the "Karafuto system", due to the fact that it enters Japan from Karafuto to

325-619: The 1970s, the transportation infrastructure of the Japanese Alps was improved, and access to some popular mountain areas became dramatically easier, increasing not only climbers but also tourists. The Komagatake Ropeway opened in 1967, the Shinhotaka Ropeway opened in 1970, and the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route fully opened in 1971. Today, the Japanese Alps encompass the Hida Mountains (飛騨山脈),

350-698: The Hida Mountains, but it is often mentioned together with the Japanese Alps in mountain guidebooks. Mount Ontake is well known as an active volcano , having erupted most recently in 2014. The Northern Alps, also known as the Hida Mountains , stretch through Nagano , Toyama and Gifu prefectures. A small portion of the mountains also reach into Niigata Prefecture . It includes the mountains Mount Norikura , Mount Yake , Mount Kasa , Mount Hotaka , Mount Yari , Mount Jōnen , Mount Washiba , Mount Suisho , Mount Yakushi , Mount Kurobegorō , Mount Tate , Mount Tsurugi , Kashima Yarigatake (鹿島槍ヶ岳), Goryū dake (五竜岳), Mount Shirouma , etc. The Central Alps, also known as

375-614: The Japanese Alps, and all of Japan. William Gowland William Gowland FRAI (16 December 1842 – 9 June 1922) was an English mining engineer who carried out archaeological work at Stonehenge and in Japan. He has been called the "Father of Japanese Archaeology". Gowland was born in Sunderland , County Durham, in northern England. He attended the Royal College of Chemistry and Royal School of Mines at South Kensington , specialising in metallurgy , and worked as

400-485: The Japanese were climbing these mountains without a comparable guidebook. Japanese people did physical exploration over a decade in the 1890s. They divided the mountains into (north, central, and south) depending on how they were conventionally grouped. William Gowland , an English geologist, first thought of this swath of terrain as forming a single coherent landscape, comparable to the European Alps. Gowland's view

425-498: The age of 79. He was buried at St. Marylebone Cemetery in East Finchley. Mount Tsurugi (Toyama) Mount Tsurugi ( 剱岳 , Tsurugi-dake ) is a mountain located in the eastern area of Toyama Prefecture , Japan. It is one of the tallest peaks in the Hida Mountains at 2,999 m (9,839 ft). It is one of the 100 Famous Japanese Mountains , and is called "the most dangerous mountain" climbable. Tsurugi has

450-503: The job, Antrobus appointed Gowland, who, despite having no formal archaeological training, produced some of the finest, most detailed excavation records ever made at the monument. The only area that he opened was around the precariously leaning Stone 56 (the western stone of the Great Trilithon), an area measuring approximately 17 by 13 ft (5.2 by 4.0 m). The task proved more difficult since only small areas could be dug at

475-492: The modernisation of Japan. His contract was repeatedly extended, and he stayed for 16 years, during which time he introduced techniques for the scientific analysis of metals, the production of bronze and copper alloys for coinage , and modern technologies such as the reverberatory furnace for improving the efficiency of refining copper ores . His expertise extended to areas outside the Japan Mint, and he also served as

500-409: The most difficult to climb. On this occasion, they found the ornaments of a metal shugenja cane and a sword on the top of the mountain. A scientific investigation later confirmed that the ornaments of the cane and the sword were from the late Nara period to the early Heian period . It turned out that Mount Tsurugi had already been climbed by shugenja more than 1,000 years ago. From the 1960s to

525-620: The mountains as a sport. As Kojima Usui later recalled, “in those days,... no one knew even the names of the mountains, much less their locations or elevations. To go mountaineering was literally to strike out into the unknown country.” The first modern geological survey sheets were issued in 1890. The report mentioned major peaks, but the topography was mostly guesswork. From 1891, foreign travelers were able to find useful information in Basil Hall Chamberlain and W.B. Mason's Handbook for Travellers in Japan . However, for decades,

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550-407: The north and runs southwest. These two were considered to be the first western explorers of the range, and as a result Weston, with the help of Gowland, popularized and documented different parts of the ranges in an incredibly in-depth manner for others to expand on. In 1907, Yoshitaro Shibasaki and others succeeded in climbing Mount Tsurugi , which is said to be the last unexplored peak in Japan and

575-506: Was further developed by another Englishman and Christian missionary, Walter Weston , who was able “to canonize Gowland's geographical conception, deploying it as a de facto proper noun”. Gowland explored several parts of the ranges in the 1860s, being the first documented foreigner to climb two peaks in the Alps, Mount Yari and Mount Norikura . Gowland was an archaeologist, and he explored these ranges for archaeological reasons. While Gowland

600-786: Was later popularised by English missionary Walter Weston . Gowland also claimed to have been the first foreigner to have climbed Yarigatake in 1874. However, Gowland is best known in Japan as an amateur archaeologist , conducting the first truly accurate scientific surveys of numerous Kofun period (3rd–7th centuries AD) burial mounds ( kofun ), which included numerous imperial mausolea. He excavated burial mounds in Saga , Fukuoka and Miyazaki Prefectures on Kyūshū , in Okayama Prefecture , and in Fukushima Prefecture north of Tokyo, in addition to numerous sites in

625-498: Was the first foreigner to explore the ranges, Reverend Walter Weston, a Christian missionary, was the first foreigner to document his experiences. About twenty years after Gowland's explorations, Weston explored the ranges himself with Gowland's notes on his explorations. Weston was led up many mountains by Kamijō kamonji, a mountain guide living in Kamikōchi . Weston explored the same ranges that Gowland previously traversed, and ascended

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