The Japanese Archipelago

The Japanese word for landscape, sansui, is derived from two characters: san, mountain, and sui, water. This compound term truly reflects the high relief of the country in that the Japanese mountains rise from one of the world's great oceanic depressions with depths of up to 10,000m. Forming part of a volcanic zone that rims the Pacific, the island chain may be likened to the crest of a submerged mountain. The mountains of Japan are described in three groups as those of Hokkaido, Honshu, and Kyusu.

The northern island of Hokkaido is dominated by volcanic mountains. In the east, some of these volcanoes are still active. The central core, Ishikari Sanchi, has the high peak, the Daisetsu-zan (2,290m). Two ranges radiate from here: the Kitami to the north and Hidaka to the south. These are of granitic rock formation. West of these are the Teshio Sanchi, parallel to the coast, and the Yubari Sanchi inland, representing a metamorphic belt. Hokkaido is the home of the Ainu, the only aborigines surviving in Japan.

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15.Tateyama area, Japan. Mt. Tateyama, with a Shinto shrine on the summit (2,872m), is much revered by the Japanese. This range in the Japanese Alps has numerous cirques (background) and thermal springs dotted with huts (foreground) for visitors.

The main island, Honshu, has an arcuate form with mountains as its backbone. These ranges are recognised in three zones: five in the north-east, three in the centre, and three in the south-west. The north-south aligned ranges of Ou, Mikuni, and Kanto form the spine of the north-west zone. The Kitatami and Abukama Ranges run close to the east coast. The central zone is a knotted complex of ranges running at right angles to the main spine of the island. Known as the Japanese Alps, these include the Hida Range in the north, the Kiso Range in the centre, and the Akaishi Range in the south. These constitute the highest mountains in Japan and there are at least seven peaks above 3,000 m, including Mount Fuji (3,776m) east of Akaishi. Composed of Palaezoic and Mesozoic rocks intruded by igneous ones, the ranges have very steep slopes. The north-west winds bring heavy snowfall in winter. The windward side has climax montane forest while the south-east leeside has mostly scrub vegetation (Kikuchi 1981). The south-western zone commences west of Nagoya in the form of a long north-south mountain linking the Ryohak, Suzuka, and Kii Ranges. The extreme western part has the Chugoku Sanchi extending between Kyoto and Hiroshima. It is an up-faulted granitic highland with mature, rounded relief. There are no peaks over 2,000m in the south-west zone. The highest is on Shikoku Island across the southern inland sea : the Ishizuchi-san (1,911m).

The southern island of Kyushu is an area of young folded mountains with some vulcanism to the south. The Kyushu Sanchi straddles north-south across the centre of the island as a distinct watershed. The high point, Kuju-san (1,787m), is situated on the northern end of the range. The Tsukushi is a minor range in the north-west aligned transverse to the central range.

The Japanese islands receive very heavy precipitation in the form of snow, rain, and typhoons. Despite the rugged topography, the mountains have dense forests. If their provenance is climatic, their preservation owes much to the sedentary orientation of Japanese agriculture without livestock and to settlements in which the main economic activity is coastal fishery. In Japanese culture, mountains are less for profane use and rather associated with spirituality. So mountains, sangaku, revered as divine, inspired shugendo or the cult of the mountain (Picken 1994) (Plate 15).