Mounting Modernization: Itakura Katsunobu, the Hokkaidō University Alpine Club and Mountaineering in Pre-War Hokkaidō

Not unlike the ways in which early Meiji-era Japanese extended their gaze northward to Hokkaidō in the interest of modernization, in the early decades of the twentieth century, various people became interested in Hokkaidō's alpine landscape informed by a belief in science and technology as the embodiments of modernity and progress. Be it government officials who wanted to develop the land or elite mountaineers who thought that science could help them overcome the challenges of nature, the story of alpinism told by David A. Fedman is one of Hokkaidō's scientific and cultural incorporation into Japan and the conquest of the natural world by modern science. Reading Blaxell's and Fedman's essays together, the authors share a concern with how modernity shaped the relationship between people and the natural world and how this was manifested in the dynamics between Hokkaidō and the rest of Japan. Because they deal with slightly different time periods, the two pieces also raise questions about the extent to which attempts by the state and those outside of Hokkaidō to tame the environment of this northernmost main island was characterized by continuity in concerns, approaches, and aims.