1912 (24 page)

On 19 November, their last day in Sydney, Shirase's men bestowed a tremendous honour upon Edgeworth David. For the only known time, a samurai sword was willingly given to a non-national. Its blade measuring only a few millimetres in thickness, the weapon had been forged by the master swordsmith Mutsu no Kami Kaneyasu in what is now Osaka, sometime between 1644 and 1648. It is now held in the Sydney Museum, and is a beautiful thing to behold.

The sword had been presented to Shirase by his sponsor in 1910 as he embarked for Antarctica, with a dedication: ‘In admiration of the expedition's courage.' It had seen innumerable battles—but after his first experience in the South Ocean, and the media frenzy in New Zealand and Australia, Shirase felt a huge debt to David. The Australian professor was touched.

The gift-giving over, the
Kainan-maru
departed Sydney Harbour for its second attempt to reach Antarctica. This time the Japanese were better prepared—they had provisions for twenty-seven men and thirty sledge dogs—and heading south at a far more sensible time of year.

Hopes were high among the members of the Japanese team. Although they were a year too late to make a bid for the South Geographic Pole, they could still carry out valuable scientific work. And at least this time they were arriving at the start of the season. Instead of the Southern Ocean threatening to trap the
Kainan-maru
, as it had at the end of the previous summer, ‘the floes that now assailed us were all half melted and extremely varied in shape,'according to the expedition report. Working through the pack ice, however, was still fraught with danger: ‘The noise the ice floes made as they banged into the ship would be followed by an interminable grating as they scraped their way along the hull followed by yet another bang. Lying in one's bunk listening to these noises was like being shut in a barrel while somebody on the outside attacked it with a stick. With every bang the ship shuddered and seemed to jump astern, and rolled in a most unsettling way.'

Working through the pack, they frequently met enormous icebergs: ‘With a ferocious tiger at the front door and a vicious wolf at the back, one peril was followed by another in quick
succession.' The pressure was sometimes too much for those on board. Most arguments would blow over, but others were terminal. Shirase fell out badly with Keiichi Tada, the secretary to the expedition, who had argued with the captain and many of the ship's officers during both voyages. Shirase finally had enough: he relieved the secretary of his duties and took him off the expedition roster.

In just a few days they were through the sea ice and into the open water of the Ross Sea. The
Kainan-maru
made good progress and, by 3 January, the Admiralty Mountains of South Victoria Land were sighted. Antarctica was in reach. What would the Japanese do now? They did not have sufficient supplies to reach the South Geographic Pole, but they could explore as far and as widely as possible. In addition to measuring the weather and ocean conditions, Shirase decided to focus part of his expedition's efforts on King Edward VII Land. Scott was known to be working in Victoria Land and some research had already been undertaken there by earlier expeditions. Unaware of the Norwegian disagreements during the aborted attempt on the South Geographic Pole, Shirase felt King Edward VII Land would offer the best return.

Here was a part of Antarctica that Scott and Shackleton had only seen from afar. Neither had managed to land a ship there, and it was uncertain how the region related to the rest of the continent. One possibility was the popular theory that the Great Ice Barrier might be one end of a vast ice-filled strait, stretching across to the Weddell Sea, splitting Antarctica in two. If Shirase could explore this area, and define its boundaries and geology, the Japanese would provide important insights. Quite possibly David had encouraged the Japanese to consider this option, given their limited resources and time. The ship set sail east for King Edward VII Land.

The official expedition report does not quite have the
eloquence of Shackleton's or Scott's writings, but the descriptions are often effective as well as lyrical: as they approached the coastline on 10 January, for instance, the Japanese had seen a glowing ‘dim white of light, reflected from the ice' and then, shortly afterwards, a cry went up of ‘Barrier ahoy' and they saw it like the ‘sinuous length of the Great Wall of China, stretching in an unbroken line from the virgin snows of morning to the moon-white light of evening before our very eyes'.

But the conditions suddenly changed. Temperatures dropped—so much so that the ink on the nibs of their pens froze. The
Kainan-maru
was attacked by a school of twenty killer whales, perhaps believing it to be prey. The two Ainu dog drivers declared the whales messengers of the gods, and were soon lost in fervent prayers during the attack. Thankfully it ended quickly, with the whales withdrawing.

The official expedition narrative indicates a predilection for fighting with the local wildlife. Whether the Japanese had read
Hints for Travellers
is unknown, but they seem to have taken to heart its list of equipment for collecting biological samples. Almost all interactions with the fauna involved a gun or a stick, and were undertaken with almost militaristic zeal.

In the sea, on the ice and in the air, nothing was safe. Albatrosses were regularly caught; one was ‘killed by having its head pushed into a barrel of water, sentenced to death by drowning'. They shot at seals on nearby floes, and the expedition report recounts the story of a young crew member diving half-naked into the sea to fight a wounded seal in the freezing water. The man was rewarded for his efforts with a tin of fruit.

It was the penguins, though, that captured the expedition's imagination. Shirase and his men saw many Adelie penguins and decided to take some home for scientific research. The process of capturing these unfortunate creatures was recounted as a tongue-in-cheek military engagement. Going ‘penguin
hunting', four of the men disembarked from the
Kainan-maru
and, ‘armed with just one gun between them, they set off gallantly, rowing towards the crystal island' where the birds stood. The men disappeared behind a mound on the surface of the floe, ‘a battle plan cleverly devised to prevent the enemy from detecting their approach'.

After capturing a couple of the birds, they found two remaining penguins were not so easy to grasp and a couple of men were required for the task. The expedition report remarked, ‘This made it an excellent match…It was a fight well worth watching, with both men and birds falling over and scrambling to their feet again and again. Though it is hard to give a proper account of this action, the best word is probably comical and we in the audience all fell about the deck laughing.' They later captured another four penguins, described as ‘a formidable enemy', and built an enclosure for these ‘important guests' outside the research cabin.

On 15 January, after the expedition found a cove in the barrier at 78°17'S and 161°50'W that they called Kainan Bay, four men were sent ashore to explore. The area was far too heavily crevassed to become their base. Deciding to move on, they sailed westward until a ship unexpectedly hove into sight some forty kilometres ahead. A cry of ‘pirates' went up. Chaos ensued as the crew tried to get a clear view of the vessel. Shirase prepared his men for action, but they soon made out the Norwegian flag and realised it was the
Fram
, waiting patiently in the Bay of Whales for Amundsen's return later that month.

The
Kainan-maru
sailed past and anchored just a couple of kilometres from the Norwegian ship. It was an ideal location: the bay was close to the barrier edge, and brimming with penguins and seals, which would provide a welcome extra supply of food to supplement their provisions. No one was more surprised than the Norwegians that two expeditions should meet like this at
the bottom of the world—they had last heard the Japanese were in Sydney. Amundsen's team could understand little of Shirase's plans, and only managed to solicit enthusiastic statements such as ‘nice day' and ‘plenty ice' from his men.

Unlike the Norwegians, the Japanese had no intention of staying over the winter. They were at the Bay of Whales to get as much work done as possible in two weeks and return home. On the ice the crew went ‘hunting penguins, seals and suchlike to dissipate the weariness of the long journey, like little birds let out of their cage'. The Norwegians were horrified.

Stores were unloaded, and equipment moved off the sea ice and onto the barrier. Cutting a route up through the ice, Shirase took six men with him to establish a base camp. Capturing moments like this, the official expedition report has a fine sense of the poetic, describing the snow and ice layers that made up the barrier as being like ‘Mother Nature herself had painted this mural, this infinite masterpiece, which had been conjured into existence by heavenly beings with celestial pigments of unearthly hues'.

After a few days the Main Landing Party had broken a route up on to the barrier and transported the supplies there. The official report later called this ‘indescribably difficult and fraught with danger…without doubt the worst of all the trials and tribulations we had experienced since we left our mother's womb'. The
Kainan-maru
left the seven-man party with an agreement to return in a couple of weeks, during which time the vessel would explore the coastal side of King Edward VII Land and attempt a landing.

Heading south on 20 January, Shirase led four men on sledges pulled by dogs for a dash into the interior. Never
realistically intending to reach the South Geographic Pole, Shirase instead aimed for the Dash Patrol to explore as far south as possible, in an area to which no one had been. So, rather than head directly south as Amundsen had, the group went southeast. The two other men remained to continue making weather observations at the base camp.

The Japanese were entirely dependent on the dogs and sledges. They had no knowledge of skis and were amazed when they later saw Amundsen's team using ‘special Norwegian snow shoes made from long, narrow boards of wood'. Instead, wearing felt-lined boots, the five men forged on through strong winds, snowstorms and temperatures as low as -25°C, covering the ground as best they could. And yet, despite their inexperience and the frequent need to halt—staying in dog-fur-lined sleeping bags inside their tents—the Japanese made good time. As they went they made observations of the weather and ice.

Condensation in the Japanese snow goggles was a common complaint. Even today this is an occupational hazard in Antarctica: perspiration regularly leads to glasses fogging up and dimming. There is nothing for it but to take them off and wipe them with a cloth. The relief at being able to see clearly makes it tempting to leave the glasses off, even knowing the risk of snow blindness. For those teams on the ice for weeks on end, even the most disciplined eventually succumbed. Snow blindness was a common and painful experience for all of the expeditions of 1912.

By 28 January the Dash Patrol had reached as far as it could safely manage. Shirase was nervous about missing the
Kainanmaru
and getting trapped in Antarctica for the winter. The Japanese had covered 237 kilometres after travelling for just eight days—remarkable, compared to the distances achieved by earlier expeditions. Scott's attempt on the South Geographic Pole, during the
Discovery
expedition, covered four hundred kilometres
but in fifty-eight days. The Japanese put much of their success down to the dogs.

Reaching 80°5'S and 156°37'W, they buried a cache: a copper casket containing a list of those who had supported the expedition. A bamboo pole with the Japanese flag was planted in the ice and, after three
banzai
—an exclamation meaning ‘ten thousand years of life', and used as a salute to the emperor—Shirase claimed the area for Japan and declared it Yamato Yukihara, or the Japan Snow Plain. After taking a few photographs, the men quickly packed up their gear and headed north, back to the Bay of Whales and, they hoped, the waiting
Kainan-maru
.