Unearthing a Forgotten Legacy
More than ten years ago, while trudging up the now cordoned-off Inamura-iwa Ridge from the sleepy village of Nippara on Tokyo’s fringes, something glinting on the side of the track caught my eye—a rusted soft drink can. Its ridged steel sides, bearing a slight dent and a detachable pull ring, displayed the label FANTA GRAPE. Despite its long abandonment, it remained surprisingly intact. This wasn’t a careless discard from a modern hiker—it was a relic, left behind or perhaps deliberately buried decades earlier during the Showa period.
And it wasn’t the only one.
Over years of hiking Japan’s mountains, I’ve encountered countless such artifacts—corroded food tins, whisky and sake bottles, and discarded forestry cable tangled in the undergrowth. Some lie half-buried near well-trodden trails or behind shuttered mountain huts and ramshackle chaya that once dotted popular routes. Many of these containers—bottles and tins alike—remain hidden until erosion or a misplaced step reveals them, quiet testaments to a time when packing out rubbish simply wasn’t the norm.
When Burying Rubbish Was Common Practice
Today, the idea of burying waste in the mountains runs counter to everything we associate with ethical hiking. Yet during Japan’s postwar recreational boom—especially from the 1960s through early 1980s—it was widely practiced.
Hikers and climbers routinely buried cans and bottles near summits, believing they would eventually rust away and disappear. In the absence of formal waste collection systems and with growing numbers of mountain-goers, this seemed practical—if not responsible. These attitudes reflected broader societal habits: from the 1950s to 1970s, tossing rubbish out of car or train windows was commonplace. Some cans even featured printed warnings: 空き缶を車窓から捨てるな (“Do not throw empty cans out of the car window”).
Even university alpine clubs, known for their strong traditions, routinely disposed of waste on-site. Tin cans were burned or buried at campsites, rubbish pits dug near huts, and whatever couldn’t be consumed or incinerated was simply hidden from sight. Even today, when passing old mountain huts, vestiges of incinerators remain—rusted drums, soot-blackened chimneys, or scorched stone enclosures. It wasn’t until 2001, with the revision of the Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law, that open-air incineration—including the use of simple hut furnaces—was officially outlawed.
Similar practices were common in Oze during its postwar hiking boom. Visitor centres have since unearthed beer cans from the 1950s and 1960s—buried in the soil or pulled from wetlands—remnants of a time before pack-it-out ethics took hold.
A Shift in Awareness
These customs were products of their era, shaped by different environmental awareness. Japan’s postwar years saw rapid industrial growth, but public consciousness about waste lagged behind. Only in the mid-1970s did modern recycling systems begin taking shape, and not until the 1990s did Leave No Trace principles—ideas centred on minimising human impact in natural areas—gain wider traction.
Oze became the proving ground for a radical new philosophy. In 1972, over 1,400 rubbish bins were removed from the wetlands as part of the newly launched gomi mochikaeri kampen (carry-your-rubbish-out campaign). The slogan was simple but radical: ゴミ箱があるから捨てる、無ければ持ち帰る (“Because there are bins, people throw garbage away. If there are none, they will take it home”).
The experiment’s success surprised even its advocates. Litter levels dropped, and the campaign’s philosophy spread—first within Oze, then nationwide—laying groundwork for modern backcountry ethics. What made Oze special wasn’t just the removal of bins, but the recognition that convenience often enables carelessness. By eliminating the easy option, hikers were forced to confront their impact more directly.
Today, signs in trailheads, huts, and national parks urge hikers to pack out everything they bring in. Mountain huts now generally refuse to take rubbish, and education around wilderness ethics has become prominent in guidebooks, signage, and hiking communities.
Yet the mountains have long memories. Even as hikers grow more conscientious, debris from earlier decades remains—surfacing like ghosts from another era.
The Layers Beneath Our Feet
These forgotten scraps of tin and glass provoke mixed feelings. They’re pollutants—foreign objects in otherwise pristine landscapes. But they’re also time capsules, silent witnesses to early generations of Japan’s recreational hikers.
I’ve found rusted cans etched with Calpis or Kirin Lemon—designs absent from store shelves for over fifty years. These relics remind us that Japan’s hiking boom wasn’t always tidy or sustainable. Today’s crowds—whether converging on Mt. Fuji or the popular peaks of Okutama—often tread trails literally layered with remnants of the past.
When I encounter these artifacts today, I’m faced with a modern dilemma: should I pack them out as litter, or leave them as unintentional monuments to the evolution of hiking culture? I suspect most hikers choose the latter. These relics feel like tangible reminders—markers of how far we’ve come, and quiet warnings of how easily we could slip back.
In that sense, they offer a kind of accidental archaeology—traces of a time when nature was often viewed as resilient enough to absorb human impact. In their quiet way, these objects remind us that the land holds memory—and that even in the most remote and unexpected places, remnants of the past still quietly endure.
What We Can Learn from the Past
It’s tempting to romanticise the Showa-era hiker—climbing in leather boots and woollen layers, carrying canvas packs, stepping into wilderness in large numbers for the first time. But just like today’s crowds, they left their mark—one still visible to those who know where to look.
Rather than condemnation, their legacy should invite reflection. After all, our own era has blind spots too. Today’s hikers may pack out their rubbish religiously, but we bring new forms of environmental impact: convenience foods wrapped in layers of plastic, single-use items like kairo hand warmers and instant noodle cups, lightweight gear manufactured halfway around the world, and the carbon footprint of our increasingly frequent mountain escapes.
The challenge isn’t just packing out what we bring—it’s thinking more deeply about what we leave behind. When I encounter those rusted cans on remote trails, I’m reminded that every generation of hikers believes they’re treading lightly. The real question is, what ghosts will future hikers uncover from our time—and what will they say about us?
