Mount Shasta of Fire and Ice and Other Essays

A riverboat drops into roaring rapids, a mountain hut becomes a place of night terrors, and California’s Mount Shasta rises like two beautiful sisters joined together. In these four complete essays, Kojima Usui turns travel into an encounter with landscape, literature, and the limits of human confidence.

The collection opens with the extraordinary recovery of Tsujimura Isuke’s Swiss diaries from the ruins of the 1923 earthquake. It then follows the Tenryū River through dangerous gorges, climbs Oku-Jōnendake into a world above the clouds, and explores Shasta’s volcanic slopes and glaciers. Geological observation stands beside recollections of medieval travelers, humorous discomfort, and moving dedications to friends.

A pioneering Japanese mountain writer, Kojima combines an alert eye for physical detail with a lyrical sense of nature’s power. This new English translation preserves all four supplied works, their historical claims, and their distinctive voices, with concise explanatory notes. AI-assisted translation, prepared and edited by Valentin Sarić.