The Japanese Alps form the backbone of central Honshu, three parallel ranges running roughly north to south and dividing the island into its Pacific and Sea of Japan watersheds. The Northern Alps, the Hida Mountains, stretch through Nagano, Toyama, and Gifu prefectures, crowned by Mount Hotaka at 3,190 meters. The Central Alps, the Kiso Mountains, hold court in Nagano. And the Southern Alps, the Akaishi Mountains, reach across Nagano, Yamanashi, and Shizuoka prefectures, where Mount Kita rises to 3,193 meters, second in all of Japan only to Mount Fuji. These are not gentle slopes. The Hida range receives some of the heaviest snowfall on Earth, and the terrain is so steep and unforgiving that a winter crossing remains the stuff of legend.

In the winter of 1584, daimyo Sassa Narimasa attempted what most considered suicidal. Desperate to reach Tokugawa Ieyasu and persuade him to continue their war against Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Narimasa led his forces over the Hida Mountains in midwinter, crossing Zara Pass and Harinoki Pass through deep snow with no modern equipment. The crossing, known as Sarasara-goe, is still commemorated in Japanese history as an act of extraordinary determination. Narimasa survived, reached Hamamatsu, and made his case to Ieyasu. Ieyasu refused. But the feat itself endures, a reminder that these mountains have always demanded everything from those who dare cross them.

Gowland coined the name, but Walter Weston made it famous. A Christian missionary who arrived in Japan in 1888, Weston spent years climbing the same ranges Gowland had traversed, ascending Mount Shirouma, Mount Jonen, Mount Kasa, and Mount Hotaka with the help of Kamijo Kamonji, a local mountain guide from Kamikochi. Weston's 1896 book, Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps, introduced the ranges to an international audience and cemented Gowland's geographic conception as a proper noun. A memorial plaque at Kamikochi honors Weston today. Yet for decades before these Englishmen arrived, Japanese climbers had been exploring the peaks without guidebooks, dividing the mountains into their northern, central, and southern groupings through sheer physical effort during the 1890s.

For most of the twentieth century, geographers stated flatly that Japan had no active glaciers. The Japanese Society of Snow and Ice proved them wrong in May 2012. By studying surface flow velocities and perennial snow patches on Mount Tsurugi in the Northern Alps, researchers found massive ice formations exceeding 30 meters in thickness that met every criterion for active glaciers. As of 2019, seven active glaciers have been confirmed in the Japanese Alps, accounting for every known glacier in the entire country. Their existence rewrites the textbook understanding of glaciation at these latitudes and elevations.

The mountains that once demanded weeks of approach on foot opened to the wider public in a single transformative decade. The Komagatake Ropeway began carrying visitors skyward in 1967. The Shinhotaka Ropeway followed in 1970, offering dramatic two-stage ascents into the heart of the Northern Alps. And in 1971, the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route fully opened, threading together cable cars, ropeways, trolley buses, and highland buses across the roof of the range. Suddenly, the peaks that had been the province of ascetics, samurai, and serious mountaineers belonged to everyone. Today the Japanese Alps draw hikers, skiers, and sightseers by the millions, but the mountains have lost none of their wildness. Step off the marked trails, and the ridges and snowfields are as formidable as they were when Narimasa's soldiers trudged through the drifts four centuries ago.