Yamasahi — Glaciation of Japan Mountains. 131 



Art. IX. — Glaciation of the Mountains of Japan*; by 



N. Yamasaki. 



Glaciation, which played so important a role in the 

 development of the topography of parts of Europe, and 

 America, is as yet known only in a few places in eastern 

 Asia. In China proper there are only a few evidences of 

 glaciation. Loczy notes its existence on the great snowy 

 mountains on the western boundary of the Province of 

 Szechuan. He also observed moraines on an eroded 

 plateau in the same mountains, but at an elevation below 

 the extremities of the present glaciers. We have no fur- 

 ther information as to the existence of glaciers in any of 

 the other high mountains of that mighty country, save 

 the discovery of tillite of great geologic age near the 

 Yangtze Gorge by "Willis and Blackwelder. There is 

 scarcely a report of the existence of glaciation farther 

 north, in the Amur Region, the Littoral Province, Kamt- 

 sckatka or in Siberia. 



It is only recently that the question of glaciation in 

 Japan has attracted the attention of scientists and been 

 discussed by them. Forty years ago the Hida Mountains, 

 a lofty chain in Middle Japan, had already been visited by 

 a score of foreign alpinists. Among them, Atkinson 

 reports that the snow of the snowfield on Mount Hakusan 

 and Mount Tateyama near the coast of the Japan Sea is 

 hard enough to be called ice. Kinch, who crossed the 

 famous Harinoki Pass, described three or four snowbeds 

 and miniature glaciers. Divers also observed in the same 

 region some snowfields with the characteristic appearance 

 of glaciers. John Milne, then professor at Tokyo, com- 

 piled their observations and came to the conclusion that 

 at an elevation of about 5,000 feet in middle Japan and at 

 4,000 feet a little farther north, near the coast of the 

 Japan Sea, there are fields of permanent snow, which are 

 sometimes so firmly consolidated as to form small 

 glaciers. He further proved the possibility of Pleisto- 

 cene glaciation in Japan on the ground of climatological 

 and biological data. He also reported the presence of 

 "roches moutonnees" on Gassan, a high, dormant volcano 



* Bead at the First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference at Honolulu, August, 

 1920. 



