Original subtitles

In Japanese the word for void is 'utsuro'.

But if you change the last syllable to 'wa', the word becomes 'utsuwa', meaning bowl.

A bowl can receive and hold some very important things.

A bowl for rice.

A bowl for tea.

If a 'roi' is added to the end...

...the word then becomes 'utsuroi' - transience...

...a word representing a concept of time rather than of space.

But to get back to the story:

You wonder perhaps what I am hoping to achieve...

...and why I have come here.

As you well know...

...I am not a sporting man...

...but I am glad to escape the humidity and heat of Tokyo.

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.

I have packed only the minimum.

My backpack is light.

I am impatient to get going.

All around me there is an infectious atmosphere of nervous excitement.

Seen from close up, Mount Fuji...

...is nothing more than one huge heap of volcanic ash and solidified lava.

It isn't nearly as attractive close up as from a distance.

Involuntarily I think of the goddess of all volcanoes...

...Kono-hana...

...who is said to dwell on Mount Fuji.

On October 28, 1707...

...the islands of Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu were hit.

The massive earthquake resulted also in a tsunami...

...causing many deaths and widespread damage and destruction.

Mount Fuji, white with snow, erupted a few weeks later.

The volcanic activity lasted sixteen days.

Cinders and ash fell like rain.

Fuji's once perfectly symmetrical cone...

...gained a new hollow on its southeastern slope:

The Hoei Crater.

The volcano hasn't erupted again since.

Blindly, we trail ever so slowly upward.

Snails would move faster.

Now the air is getting cooler and thinner.

I breathe faster.

I can feel the veins at my temples throbbing.

The sun is getting low.

My fellow hikers occasionally call out encouragement to each other:

'Do your best!' 'Not far now!'

You're the writer and translator...

...the keeper of books.

I can only take pictures.

Language never felt much of an ally to me.

Even now I struggle for words to hold on to.

It starts to rain. Umbrellas unfold.

Reminding me of Hokusai woodcuts.

Behold, the sacred, the magic mountain!

The spiritual connection between heaven and earth.

The most ideal mountain:

Symmetrical, solitary, snow-capped...

...and thus beyond the reach of time.

Tradition has it that Fuji is best viewed from afar.

I walk, I am only walk.

One tired foot after the other.

It is all I can do to keep both feet on the ground.

Footing slips on the loose gravel slopes.

Two steps forward, one step back.

On the red lava gravel it feels as if...

...I am transgressing the surface of Mars.

Of course, we are not the first to climb.

The first hikers, over a thousand years ago...

...followed a long Asian tradition of hermits and mountain monks.

See the 'Fujiko' pilgrims in their white clothes and wide straw hats.

From the famous womb cave situated at Mount Fuji's base...

...comes sacred, blood-red rock.

Rain drops which have seeped through the porous volcanic rock...

...are collected as breast milk.

In 1733...

...one Fujiko leader climbed Fuji and gained...

...a saint's reputation by fasting himself to death.

Acting upon a vision he received from the goddess Kono-hana...

...he believed that the sacrifice of his body...

...would signal the beginning of a new and better age for mankind.

After fasting for 33 days...

...he died, as he himself had predicted, enclosed in a small portable shrine.

Photography came early to Japan.

Japan was forced to open up to foreign Western trade...

...after the last of the Unequal Treaties was signed in 1869.

In Yokohama...

...foreign photographers opened Japan's first photo studios.

Westerners residing in the city at that time...

...gladly bought...

...hand-coloured landscape photographs and studio portraits.

Japan's first native photographers soon opened their own studios...

...after training with Felice Beato and the likes.

After four mind-numbing hours I have reached the 8th station.

There were regular traffic jams all the way up.

Sadly the supreme mountain has become a victim of its own success.

At least now I can stop, eat noodle soup and rest.

There are the stone huts for sleeping...

...souvenir shops and places selling food and drink...

...even vendors selling beer and sake.

At nightfall the temperature drops further...

...and a bitter cold settles.

My plan is to sleep for a few hours...

...and to resume the hike shortly after midnight.

In the dormitory rows of sleeping bags lie ready...

...but I do not want to go inside just yet.

Up here the view of the clear night sky...

...is magical, mesmerizing.

So many stars.

Never have I seen so many stars so bright.

It is as if I could reach out my hand and touch them!

How I wish you were here with me.

You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.

I saw everything. Everything.

The hospital for instance. I saw it. I'm sure I did.

There is a hospital in Hiroshima.

How could I help seeing it?

On behalf of the Allied Forces, the US occupied Japan for seven years.

The population was impoverished.

Tokyo lay in ruins.

The government and constitution was democratised. Factories rebuilt.

The economy restored.

Not least amongst the democratic reforms...

...was freedom of the press and banning of censorship.

But did you know, you ask...

...that the US forces strictly censored all movies at that time?

Mount Fuji was considered a symbol for the wrong sort of patriotism...

...and was therefore removed from all films.

An omission, the great irony being...

...that this omission itself was carefully omitted...

...from all public mention.

Mount Fuji's image was employed...

...misused and manipulated...

...by both sides.

The military government paraded the mountain as a call to arms...

...a reminder of duty, loyalty...

...homeland, nation.

At the same time pamphlets which were thrown out of US aeroplanes...

...show a mountain evoking homesickness...

...longing for peacetime and for family.

Times change...

...but the mountain never forgets.

A silent eye which never blinks.

The mountain sees centuries of life...

...roll together into one brief animated scene.

An atlas of time.

I suspect you never saw this movie...

...my favourite Japanese movie, so please allow me to explain.

Godzilla is a huge, angry prehistoric monster...

...with the looks of a carnivorous dinosaur...

...and the capabilities of a nuclear bomb.

At that time US army testing of H-bombs in the Pacific ocean...

...was contaminating tuna sold in Japanese market stalls.

And in any case the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...were all too fresh in people's minds.

In the final scene of the third Godzilla film from 1962...

...King Kong and Godzilla engage in a definitive battle on top of Mount Fuji.

Eventually they both fall off Mount Fuji, plunging into the sea.

Godzilla disappears...

...leaving King Kong to swim back home...

...to the imaginary island of Faro...

...far away in the Pacific Ocean.

With difficulty I have pulled myself up...

...out of a shallow and fitful sleep.

My body is protesting and wants to do anything but this.

But here I am, in the dark...

...following the narrow light of my headlamp torch.

Struggling, cursing...

...and groping...

...I have forgotten what I came here for.

When I turn and look back down the trail...

...I see an endless line of lights erratically tracing its way.

Mankind is a string of glow worms trudging its way up a mountain.

The last few hundred metres were the slowest...

...and the heaviest.

The human body was not designed to hike in the early hours of the morning.

Like a blind man my feet search for footholds.

Like spectators at a football match...

...a crowd of hikers sit restlessly on the slopes facing east...

...waiting for the first ray of light to splash over the edge of the horizon.

We all wait for this one moment, for the 'Arrival of Light'.

For Goraiko.

When it comes cries of excitement and enthusiasm go up.

People stand up...

...and raise their hands...

...shouting Banzai! Banzai!

Pilgrims stand and bow to greet the Sun.

It feels like we are on another planet.

I feel the warm Sun hitting my face...

...as if for the very first time.

Tanizaki writes:

'We find beauty not in the thing itself...'

'...but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness...'

'...that one thing against another creates.'

You can climb a mountain...

...the highest mountain.

But upon reaching the top, you will realise...

...there is nothing there.

In order to catch the last bus I start to make my way down the mountain.

Although faster than the ascent...

...the descent is certainly much heavier.

My knees creak and groan.

I break into a reluctant jog and let gravity...

...do its job...

...trailing my walking stick behind me.

The only way down is to pass through the sea of clouds.

It has been said, that for Westerners Japan is a great mirror.

I beg to differ...

...but even if it were true...

...do not forget that the mirror itself is also always changing.

Sometimes cloudy...

...at other times shiny and new.

The tale of Akinosuke.

Sitting under his favourite cedar tree with friends...

...Akinosuke suddenly feels tired and takes a nap.

When he awakes his friends are gone...

...but he sees coming towards him a grand procession of royal attendants.

They inform him that the King of Tokoyo requests his presence at his palace.

Upon arrival Akinosuke is offered...

...the King's daughter in marriage.

Soon he is even appointed governor of an idyllic and bountiful island.

His beautiful wife...

...bears him seven bright and happy children.

One day however his wife suddenly falls ill and dies.

Akinosuke goes to much trouble to give her a befitting funeral...

...and erects a stone monument in her memory.

The King sends for him, telling him not to worry, that his children will be cared for.

As Akinosuke sails away and looks back...

...the island suddenly disappears.

And he is shocked to find himself...

...under the cedar tree once more with his friends...

...to whom he relays his dream.

They, in turn, tell him that he was only asleep for a few moments...

...and of a yellow butterfly which flew out of his mouth...

...and was grabbed by an ant.

They wonder whether the butterfly...

...is Akinosuke's soul.

Digging under the cedar tree...

...Akinosuke finds a kingdom of ants...

...and realises that this is the kingdom of his dream.

Digging further he comes across a second nest...

...and a small stone shaped like a monument...

...beneath which he finds inside a small clay coffin...

...the body of a female ant.