Numinous Topographies: Mountaineering, Spirituality, and Nature in Modern Japan

Co-sponsored with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and the Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum

We tend to think of mountain climbing as either a form of religious faith or recreation. That one (mountain worship) embodies tradition, piety, and cultural identity, while the other (mountaineering) belongs to modernity, secularism, and transnationalism. Yet this grouping rests on a shaky foundation of binaries—traditional/modern, religion/sport, sacred/secular—that oversimplify our relationship to the mountains and broader natural world. Taking the case of Japan, this talk explores the subtle role religious thought and practice played in the formation of modern mountaineering. This process occurred in the Meiji and Taisho periods—an era when foreign residents, especially British, began climbing mountains in Japan as a form of leisure. A few of them eventually partnered with an ambitious cohort of Japanese mountain climbers, the latter of whom pioneered their own routes, established the Japanese Alpine Club (1905), and launched a triannual journal (Sangaku) that published among other things ruminations on the meaning and value of the sport. While commonly thought of as a secular endeavor, this talk sketches out that formative period of mountaineering through the lens of critical religious studies. It will introduce writings and alpine practices by British and Japanese from this time, while exploring a larger question: why do we continue to seek out mountains and other settings of nature in our own lives?