BY G. VENKATACHALAM

Climbing volcanoes in Japan is not an adventure, as in Java, but a pleasurable pastime.

The Japs have a tremendous fascination for fact, for anything that is delightfully dangerous.

They love to play at the brink of death.

Or else how can one explain their strange national psychology of persisting, in spite of repeated destruction of their capital by earthquakes, fires and tidal-waves, in making Tokyo not only their chief city but one of the largest and most modern cities; or of committing harikari in order to follow someone they dearly loved; or of cheerfully offering themselves as human bullets; or of young couples jumping into active volcanoes when they are supremely happy?

Japanese volcanoes have this tragic association in the minds of foreign visitors. Several hundreds of such suicides are recorded every year.

"You see those bright young things," said our companion, an American-born Japanese girl, pointing to a crowd of merry holiday revelers who were forging ahead of us post-haste to the crater of Miharayama. "Who knows how many of them are contemplating a plunge into the crater!"

That night we heard on the boat carrying us back to Tokyo that two happy couples did take a plunge fearing that this world might blight their future happiness and treat them cruelly.

Japan has a ring of volcanoes extending practically from one end of the empire to another. The most famous of them, however, lie in the two main islands of Kyiushu and Honshu.

Fuji San is the midmost point in this long chain, and though not active now, is still the most famous of them all.

Asama San, not far from the summer resort of Karuizawa, Aso San in the southern island of Kyiushu, and Miharayama in the island of Oshima are the three well-known and most active volcanoes in Japan today.

Miharayama is nearer to Tokyo than the other two and also more easily accessible. The island of Oshima. in the Pacific, is only a night’s journey by boat from the capital, and there is a daily service at nine in the night.

The boat is usually crowded and in week-ends it is almost impossible to get accommodation. Students, shop-girls, factory workers, mill-hands, businessmen and clerks, all rush to this lovely island to spend their week-ends.

Oshima lay, bathed in mists and rains, like a faery castle rising out of a sea of sapphire, as our two-thousand-ton boat puffed and tugged into a placid harbour after a terrible and stormy voyage a whole night.

"The worst crossing in several years." remarked the Captain, who plies the boat up and down from Tokyo to Monomotto.

Automobiles and buses meet passengers and whisk them off to the pretty little village nestling amidst the camelia-clad slopes of the Miharayama. Clean Japanese Inns welcome the tired traveller, and from the rooms overlooking the bay one gets a fine view of the shimmering sea and the dim distant mountains of Hakone.

After rest and refreshments you attempt the ascent either on foot or on horse or donkey. The path is narrow and steep, and in the rains slippery and dangerous. At short intervals tea kiosks, run by charming Oshima maidens, provide fresh fragrant cha and luscious fruits.

Girls of this island are of the fairest and most attractive in the whole of Japan. Rosy cheeks, laughing eyes, ripe-cherry lips, fresh and healthy, they are the chief attraction in the island after Miharayama.

Amidst glowing camelias and flaming rhododendrons, they move about like Utamaro’s dream maidens, dressed in their white and black check patterned kimonos, a white scarf round their heads, and with their friendly smiles and nods. Men in this little island lounge about and live lazily while these dark-eyed maidens spin and toil, hew and draw, cook and work to support them.

From the summit of the isle Fuji can be seen, like a far-off vision, across the blue sea and the green hills. A small desert has to be crossed before the crater is reached, and camels are available for this short ride of a mile and half distance. Black sand stretches all around extending right up to the lip of the crater.

Incessant smoke and fire shoot up from unknown depths and the sight is awe-inspiring. The temptation to plunge headlong into that mysterious yawning mouth comes even to a non-Japanese mind. Low rumbling noise, hissing watery vapours, clouds of dense dark smoke rise from the bowels of the earth, revealing Nature’s hidden powers of death and destruction.

Man seems a puny helpless creature before one of these primeval forces, one of whose dark moods will destroy in the twinkling of an eye what he has so laboriously and patiently built during centuries.

Aso San is, perhaps, the largest active volcano in the world and, therefore, a show-place in the empire. Like all great show-places in Japan, it is treated as a National Park under Government supervision.

Bochu is the nearest railway station to this spot, and the best and quickest way is to take the fast Express between Moji and Kagoshima and to change at Kumomoto for Bochu. A narrow gauge winds up the hills and valleys passing through some interesting watering places. Near Bochu itself there is a popular hot-spring village with commodious Inns.

A fleet of modern buses take visitors up and down the volcano mountains and the usual efficiency of the modern Japanese is visible everywhere.

"Would you like to visit the crater at once?" asked a smart young Japanese girl, in perfect American accent, to our utter delight and amazement.

Very few Japanese speak English and speak so well.

We placed ourselves at her disposal and accepted her guidance in everything. She told us her life story as we drove to our night’s lodging in a watering centre some three miles’ distance.

Her name was Sumiko Araki; she was born of Japanese parents at Honolulu and was educated, as a girl, in the United States of America. She was engaged at Bochu as a Warden in charge of a score or more girls employed as bus conductresses by a Motor Transport Company.

She was smart, intelligent and very obliging. She was not an official guide but likes to be useful to visitors, especially to foreigners, and she expects no remuneration for her services. She even accompanied us to the top of the mountain and conducted us all over the place explaining things to us. And all done for the mere love of being useful to strangers.

The motor road to the top of the Naka Dake runs first through undulating green hills and then over lava-covered regions passing by several extinct craters. The climb from the resting place to the lips of the crater is easy though awe-inspiring.

Various centres in this huge vortex have been active at one time or another, and still one can see smoke and steam hissing their way through slimy mud and coloured crevices. A huge cauldron of boiling earth meets your eye everywhere when you peep down below, and giant boulders of rocks shot up by the volcano lie scattered about all around.

Volumes of smoke, dust and heat come curling up from depths below. A thunder-like sound is incessantly heard below your feet.

"Aso San has moods like a maiden," assures our friend, forgetting her own sex, "and at any moment she may become furious and throw things, burning things, liquid metals and molten lava, sky high."

Only a few years back she threw up a gigantic granite rock of several hundred ton weight, burning hot and emitting flames, which took several months to cool down. These work-shops of Vulcan strike terror and, paradoxically enough, exert a strange fascination that is irresistible!

Papandayang in Java, Mihara and Aso in Japan are three such "Thunder Mountains" which have exerted this fascination on me.

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