Hotaka-dake Stamp and Yoichi Nakagawa's 'Ten no Yugao'
This is a 10-yen stamp from the second National Park series, featuring 'Chubu Sangaku National Park,' issued on August 10, 1972 (Showa 47).
The design depicts Hotaka-dake in Chubu Sangaku National Park and is characterized by its purple tones.
Chubu Sangaku National Park, which embraces the peaks of the Northern Alps. That world possesses a face as a stage for modern Japanese literature that goes beyond being merely a scenic spot. Rugged rocky peaks, deep valleys, plateaus shrouded in mist, and the flow of the Azusa River, cold even in summer—such landscapes led many writers to imagine a 'separate world cut off from the mundane.'
One of the representative works of this is 'Ten no Yugao' (Evening Face of Heaven).
Published in 1938 (Showa 13), this novel is known as one of the representative works of romantic literature in pre-war Japan. The author is Yoichi Nakagawa. It later gained high acclaim overseas, and is known in particular for being praised by Albert Camus.
The story progresses as the protagonist, 'I,' recalls memories of Yugao, a woman he once loved. A plateau in a summer resort, a quiet village deep in the mountains, and clear air. The faint yet intense romance with the woman he met there eventually fades away amidst the war and the flow of the times.
The appeal of 'Ten no Yugao' lies perhaps more in its articulation of the 'mountain air' than in the plot itself.
Coniferous forests wrapped in mist.
A silent mountain village.
The cold air of the highlands, far removed from civilization.
Although the location explicitly mentioned in the work is said to be near the northern part of the Hida Mountains, the landscape that readers imagine there is often the 'Northern Alps world' itself, including Kamikochi and Hotaka-dake. The image of the vast mountain space of Chubu Sangaku National Park and the fantastical nature of 'Ten no Yugao' naturally overlap.
Regarding the fact that this 'mountain' occupies a special position in Japanese literature, Hakucho Masamune writes something interesting in his essay'Mountaineering Hobby'.
'Although Japan is surrounded by the sea on all four sides, it lacks a literature of the ocean. There are no excellent writings depicting life at sea. However, writings concerning mountains seem to have appeared quite frequently even after the Meiji era.'
Indeed, although Japan is a maritime nation, grand maritime epics like those in Western literature did not develop much. On the other hand, mountain literature developed uniquely.
'Ice Wall,' 'The Lone Person,' and 'Ten no Yugao.' Japanese mountains have been depicted not merely as nature, but as places that reflect 'loneliness,' 'escape,' 'asceticism,' 'death,' and 'longing.'
The Northern Alps, in particular, held a special meaning for modern Japanese people.
After the Meiji era, the term 'Japan Alps' spread, and Kamikochi and Hotaka-dake began to attract not only mountaineers but also writers, painters, students, and intellectuals. It was not just a tourist destination, but a 'place where modern people could escape reality and re-examine themselves.'
The mountain world where the protagonist of 'Ten no Yugao' hides is also exactly on the extension of that Northern Alps fantasy.
When looking at the mountains of Chubu Sangaku National Park, one sometimes gets a strange feeling.
Those rugged rocky peaks and deep valleys seem to reject people, yet at the same time, they also attract them. If the sea is a 'place that opens to the outside world,' perhaps Japanese mountains are 'places where one descends into one's own inner self.'
That is likely why, in Japan, mountains became literature before the sea did.