Mountains, Lakes and Hot Springs

Stone gates on the razor ridges of Mount Myōgi, where a self-styled prophet and his young wife sing hymns among the crags. A boat on the deepest bay of Lake Towada, and a stone dropped over the side, fluttering down like a fish until it vanishes. Fall after fall up a trackless ravine in Hokkaido, a campfire for a quilt, and a newspaper reporting the author lost. A missed train, frozen waterfalls and a stewed hare on Mount Haruna at the turn of the year.

Ōmachi Keigetsu (1869-1925), the best-loved travel writer of Meiji and Taishō Japan, was also an indefatigable climber. These eight pieces, written between 1898 and 1923, follow him from the hot springs and volcanoes of Gunma and Tochigi to the Oirase gorge in the far north and the summit plateau of Daisetsuzan, the roof of Hokkaido, with friends, guides, local worthies and a bottle of sake never far away.

At the heart of the book are three long journeys: Five Days on Mount Myōgi; Lake Towada, the record of an eighteen-day tour of the north that helped make the lake famous; and From the Sōunkyō Gorge to Daisetsuzan. The collection also includes Mountains of Ten Thousand Shaku, The Hot Spring of Yashio, The New Seven Wonders of Shiobara, From Numata in Jōshū to Nikkō and Mount Haruna in Winter. Each is translated complete and unabridged directly from the Japanese.