Pathway to Japanese Literature

Black Moon and White Moon

The towering peak of Mauna Loa on Hawaii Island had its entire area—a full circuit larger than Kanagawa Prefecture centered around its 13,700-foot summit—covered in black lava.
Not a single living thing—trees, grasses, insects, birds—could survive in this land.
I had written about this black moon world before.

However,there also existed on this Earth a white moon world in perfect contrast to this.
This was the landscape upon Greenland’s ice cap (Ice Cap).
An ice cap forms from snow that has fallen since ancient times—accumulated without melting,piled layer upon layer,and transformed into ice under its own weight.
If you imagine it as a motionless glacier formed on flat land,your understanding would essentially hold true.

Greenland was the largest island in the world and, excluding Antarctica, the landmass closest to the pole.
Its area was 2.14 million square kilometers, amounting to six and a half times Japan's then-current total territory.
Though politically part of Denmark, this immeasurably vast land housed only about 23,000 inhabitants.
Most were Eskimos.

To speak of 23,000 people across an expanse six and a half times Japan's size would have meant describing near-total uninhabitation.
In truth, most of Greenland lay buried beneath its ice cap - whose surface formed an utterly unpeopled realm.
More precisely than uninhabited, this constituted a world wholly barren of life.
Examining Greenland's map revealed only an attenuated coastal strip tinged with color against an interior preserved in purest white.
This blanched expanse represented the ice cap itself - no less than sixfold Japan's territorial span.
There existed nothing but snow and ice - neither trees nor visible rocks.
Ultimately it stood as a domain where no blackness could endure.

What was even more astonishing was the thickness of this ice cap's ice.
The elevation of the ice cap had been roughly measured across nearly its entire expanse—the highest point exceeded eleven thousand feet while averaging approximately seven thousand.
When we measured its thickness using artificial seismic waves typically employed in mineral exploration, we found values generally matching or slightly surpassing its elevation.
The base lay near or below sea level.
Thus Greenland’s ice cap could be succinctly described as an icy mass comparable in thickness to Japan’s Alps yet six times larger than Japan’s entire landmass—a colossal mirror-like rice cake of frost.
In short: an unfathomable entity.

I stated there was no life upon the ice cap, but this stood to reason.
For plants or trees to grow, they would need to send roots seven thousand feet deep through the ice to reach the soil below.
In land where neither trees nor grasses grew, insects could not dwell, and consequently birds and beasts could not survive.
In short, there was nothing but snow and ice.
Since there had been a notion that bacteria might at least exist within the ice, biologists had meticulously examined ice samples collected from various depths across the ice cap, but as of then, even those had yet to be discovered.
It was a world where even bacteria could not survive.

Some may think that the ice cap’s reported thickness being so great must be some sort of error.
However, it was discovered only very recently that similar ice exists in Antarctica as well.
Burtonrand was one of the American bases located roughly midway between the Antarctic Circle and the Pole.
There, when they measured the ice thickness using artificial seismic waves, a value of approximately 10,000 feet was obtained.
This stood as one achievement of the International Geophysical Year.
However, Burtonrand’s elevation was merely about 5,000 feet.
This meant the base of the ice extended 5,000 feet below sea level.

However, what was even more astonishing was that on the opposite side of Burtonrand across the South Pole lay a Soviet base, where measurements of the ice thickness had also yielded values approaching 10,000 feet. If this proved accurate, Antarctica would cease to be a single continent. There had long existed a theory that Antarctica comprised two landmasses, and this might indeed turn out to be true.

In Greenland’s case, it had been established that most of the inland area appeared to lie below sea level.
Only along the narrow coastal regions did the so-called coastal mountain range continuously encircle the island.
This was an ancient geological rock formation—naturally devoid of trees or grasses—that exposed bare rock surfaces as if carved by eternal ice and snow.
Most of them were rocky hills ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 feet in height, and these indeed protruded above sea level.

So then, were all this ice cap's ice to melt, Greenland would likely form nothing but a ring around its periphery, its interior reduced to shallows.
Among coral reefs there exists a type called an atoll; it appears matters would develop in precisely that fashion.

However, there was a counterargument to this—it was also considered that if all the ice were to melt, Greenland’s interior would rise up.
When speaking of ice with an average height of seven thousand feet, it represented an immense weight.
If this much weight were applied over millions of years, the land would sink under its burden.
However, it was also considered that if this load were removed, the land would rise again.
To call it "land" was rather misleading—utterly unreliable, with many areas likely resembling spongy gelatin.
In fact, in Scandinavia during modern times, glaciers had been steadily retreating.
As a result, the coast gradually rose.
In Greenland’s case, if land six and a half times the size of Japan were to rise and sink, it would indeed have been a truly grand-scale phenomenon.

Melting Glaciers

The fact that glaciers began retreating in modern times was not limited to Scandinavia.
The glaciers of the Alps were also rapidly retreating.
In the Alps stood a hotel built fifty years prior in a scenic location chosen for its direct view of a glacier.
Yet now it was said one could no longer see the glacier from that hotel.
This was climate change enacting business sabotage.

It was said that Greenland’s ice cap was also retreating at its periphery at a discernible rate.
In the United States，the Snow，Ice and Permafrost Research Institute，which I had previously assisted，had been leading expeditions to Greenland every summer for four years.
This year marked their fifth.
According to their accounts，even over this mere five-year period，the retreat of the ice cap had become clearly observable.

This summer saw particularly striking ice cap melting.
I arrived at June’s end when intense thawing soon began.
Having stayed near the ice cap’s edge for some time—where changes appeared most pronounced—I witnessed countless meltwater rivers surging across the ice field with terrifying force.
The converging waters formed temporary lakes before draining seaward in truly flood-like spectacle.
Torrents roared with waterfall intensity, sending spray flying as they writhed snakelike across the glacial plain.
This melting showed scarcely any abatement until early August’s departure from the area.

It is a fact that the Earth’s temperature has been gradually rising since the beginning of this century.

In Hokkaido and other regions, elderly residents who had long resided there often recounted how winters were colder and snowier in the past.
In central Sapporo, stories emerged of people getting lost right in the middle of Odori Avenue.
Even taking these accounts with a grain of salt, it appeared true that temperatures were gradually rising.

In the United States as well, this point came into question, and through the meteorological agency’s efforts, temperatures at weather stations nationwide were investigated over the past sixty years.
As a result, they concluded that during these sixty years, the average annual temperature had risen by at least one degree Celsius.
One degree Celsius might seem negligible, but an increase of this magnitude in the annual average temperature constitutes a significant problem.

Here, the issue divides into two aspects.
Earth’s temperatures have always changed cyclically throughout history.
This is precisely why so-called ice ages have repeatedly occurred.
However, alongside such major fluctuations, there were also variations with shorter cycles and smaller magnitudes of change.
For instance, these are fluctuations where temperatures slightly rise and fall over cycles spanning several hundred years.
Now, if the temperature rise since the beginning of this century were part of such cyclical variation, no particular problem would emerge.
If we simply wait another half-century, a colder period would likely arrive again.

However，while this might have been somewhat alarmist，another possibility could be considered．
The point was that the current temperature rise might be attributable to human activity．
The advancement of material civilization since the beginning of this century had been truly extraordinary，with fuel consumption reaching enormous quantities．
In Los Angeles alone，one million gallons of gasoline are burned daily．
The global consumption of coal and oil reached staggering quantities．
Combustion is invariably accompanied by the production of carbon dioxide．
However，on the other hand，while carbon dioxide is absorbed through plant assimilation，deforestation continues to advance．
Both factors were trending toward increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere．

If the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, because it would absorb more of the sun’s radiation, the Earth’s temperature would rise.
Therefore, the recent temperature rise stems from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, raising the question of whether this increase contains a significant anthropogenic component.
Were this true, it would present an exceedingly troublesome scenario; since fuel consumption will only continue growing, we must conclude that temperatures would persistently rise.

Therefore, the first question was whether the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had actually increased in recent years.
Since this was heavily influenced by local factors, reaching a definitive conclusion had proven quite difficult; however, according to Dr. Junge, an expert in this field, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased by 10 percent over the past fifty years.
Even if that were indeed the case, whether it stemmed from anthropogenic causes remained a separate question.
Because seawater readily dissolves carbon dioxide, no definitive conclusions could be drawn without thoroughly investigating its concentration in seawater.
However, in any case, this was a problem that required extensive research from meteorological and oceanographic perspectives.
This was because if temperatures continued rising at this accelerating rate, catastrophic consequences would ensue.

Whatever the cause, there were scholars who suggested that if temperatures continued to rise at the current rate for another fifty years, the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice would mostly melt during summer, allowing ships to navigate considerably more easily.
That scenario might have been convenient, but if all the ice in Greenland’s ice cap, Antarctica, Northern Europe, Siberia, and other regions were to melt, a major catastrophe would occur.
There had been two or three scholars who calculated the total amount of ice then existing on Earth.
Estimates varied considerably among them, but in any case, it represented an enormous quantity. Should it all melt and flow into the sea, sea levels would rise significantly above then-current levels.
Some calculated that sea levels would rise by as much as 180 feet.
Even half that amount would have been catastrophic.

Since nearly all of the world’s major cities are located close to coastlines, they would all end up submerged beneath the sea.
If New York, London, and Tokyo were all to end up submerged beneath the sea, it would be catastrophic.

This story made for mildly interesting newspaper fodder and had been covered extensively in both the United States and Japan.
Of course, since no one genuinely worried about events two or three centuries hence, it merely provided fleeting amusement in living rooms.
Yet whether this matter was simply 'an entertaining tale' or grounded in solid scientific evidence remains unclear.

To address this problem scientifically, research into long-term climate changes had to be conducted.
Moreover, long-term climate change remained a problem worthy of thorough investigation even independent of this issue.
Thus as part of the International Geophysical Year's initiatives, the U.S. Greenland Expedition Team incorporated this research into their program.

The selection of Greenland for studying long-term climate changes proved an inspired concept.
That ice cap comprised snow accumulated since time immemorial - never melting, gradually compressed under its own weight into glacial ice.
Samples extracted from its depths yielded water from antiquity.
The deeper we drilled, the more ancient the water we obtained.
Furthermore, the ice contained countless air bubbles.
As snow compressed into ice over millennia, trapped air formed these frozen pockets.
The atmosphere preserved within these bubbles was equally ancient.
For thousands upon thousands of years, tangible evidence of Earth's air and water had lain perfectly preserved within this icy vault.
By skillfully analyzing these natural archives, we might extract crucial knowledge about climatic shifts across epochs.
But first required thorough investigation of the ice cap's fundamental properties.
This precise objective formed the primary purpose of my Greenland expedition that summer.

Journey to the Ice Cap

The plan to go to Greenland was first proposed at the end of last year.

Last summer，the expedition team from the Snow，Ice and Permafrost Research Institute succeeded in collecting ice samples from deep within the ice cap through boring．
The boring reached a depth of 1，000 feet，and nearly intact samples were obtained up to about 800 feet．
This year，with assistance also coming from the International Geophysical Year，a plan was established to conduct boring up to 2，000 feet．
If two thousand feet were reached，ice samples from over a thousand years ago could be obtained．
Since such opportunities rarely came by，I resolved to take part．

The observation site was located at 78 degrees north latitude, far to the north in Greenland.
The elevation was approximately seven thousand feet—that is to say, on ice seven thousand feet thick.
This place was called Site Two (Site Tsu), yet lay only about 750 miles distant from the North Pole.
Greenland is located much further north than one might initially assume, so the Arctic Circle line passes close to its southern extremity.
When one speaks of Fairbanks, Alaska, it may sound like a land of the extreme north, but it actually lies slightly south of the Arctic Circle.
From this alone, one could see just how close the observation site lay to the pole.

However, merely going to the Arctic would be meaningless, so I promptly decided to construct measurement equipment.
Ice possesses the property of elasticity inherent to solids but also exhibits a molasses-like quality—namely viscosity.
Since elasticity and viscosity were considered ice's most essential properties, I decided to measure these two characteristics in specimens collected from various depths of the ice cap.
The device was created by Dr.Kuroiwa of Hokkaido University and Mr.Shindo and was an electronic machine using an electromagnetic oscillograph and cathode-ray oscilloscope.
Using this precision instrument on Greenland’s ice cap proved rather reckless yet yielded extremely intriguing results without a single malfunction.
I had already detailed these experimental results in *The Ice of the Arctic* and thus omitted them here, though even American researchers remarked how Greenland studies had moved beyond shovels and balances.
Japan too had come to produce remarkable machinery by then.

This machine was finally completed about three days before I left Japan.
I loaded it onto a plane, flew to Chicago, and conducted tests in the low-temperature chamber at the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Institute in Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago.
Since the results were excellent, I felt reassured and decided to fly on to Greenland.

Far to the north along Greenland’s western coast, a town called Thule had been constructed in recent years.
It lay just past 76 degrees north latitude.
America had leased this entire surrounding area from Denmark, built an excellent airfield, and designated it as the “first line of northern defense.”
Unlike in Japan, since this was land where almost no people lived, there seemed to be no particular problem.
From the U.S. East Coast to there existed a daily regular flight service.
Thus Thule remained within the civilized world.
A flight would depart from Philadelphia’s suburban airport and arrive at Goose Bay Airport in Labrador, Canada five hours later.
After refueling there, proceeding straight north would take approximately nine hours to reach Thule.
The flight during this period was half over the rocky mountains between Labrador and Baffin Island, and half over the sea with drift ice and icebergs.

Goose Bay already lay at roughly the same latitude as Heihe on the Soviet-Manchurian border.
It neared the northern limit of forested zones.
Winter brought snow accumulations of twenty feet.
There they built an airport handling large aircraft and used it year-round.
An hour after takeoff from Goose Bay transformed the scenery into pure 'Arctic'.
Only naked crags and serpentine fjords met the eye.
No dwellings, no fields, no roads—nothing human-made remained visible.
Yet Eskimos reportedly inhabited the coast, while northern Labrador had slipped beyond civilization's edge.

Baffin Island, located north of Labrador, was a large island—much larger than the entire land area of Japan.
When it came to this island, the majority already lay within the Arctic Circle.
The entire island consisted of fearsome rocky mountains; bluish-black rocks that evoked ancient geology lay bare their exposed surfaces.
It truly gave the impression of having endured aeons of ice and snow.
Not to mention trees, areas covered with grass could not be seen at all.

Along the coast, fjords were well-developed everywhere, their narrow bays extending far inland. The steep rocky mountains plunged directly into the sea, forming both banks of these fjords. The sea lay half-covered with drift ice; on the rocky mountains stretching far inland, glaciers and perennial snow shimmered white, while beyond them depths lingered beneath leaden-hued layered clouds. This was a world utterly detached from human realms—in its desolate severity of scenery, this island surpassed even Greenland.

This world composed solely of white ice and bluish-black rock was, so to speak, a monochrome photograph; yet what lent it color was the hue of the sunset clouds. Since we had left Goose Bay in the evening, it should have been night by the time we reached this area. However, the sun began to set but lingered near the horizon indefinitely. Indeed, if one goes as far as Thule, during this period the sun shines even at midnight. As we were approaching such a region, the sun did not set. Above the leaden layered clouds, high up, cirrus clouds of various shapes trailed like threads. The sun on the horizon painted the edges of the leaden layered clouds crimson, while the cirrus clouds above shimmered golden. The air was terrifyingly clear, and the transparent celadon-blue hue of the sky melted beautifully into the faint pink layer near the horizon. This is the sky color commonly seen in high-latitude regions.

Crossing Baffin Bay northeastward from near this island’s northern tip brought us to Thule on Greenland’s northern edge.
After flying for about two hours over a sea of drift ice and icebergs—while I had been dozing off—someone exclaimed, “Ah, Greenland!”
There before us rose unmistakably Greenland’s coastal range mountains.
Though midnight had passed, the sun hung high; perhaps because of this, the sea shone deep azure where gleaming white icebergs appeared like a flock of swans.

The rocks of Greenland differed slightly in hue from those of Baffin Island. There was no doubt they were completely bare rocky mountains, but the rocks were mostly greenish-black in color, with some areas being brownish. These rocky mountains, carved by ice since geological antiquity, bore slight rounding rather than jaggedness. Although they gave a sense of being removed from the human world, they presented an atmosphere slightly more familiar than that of Baffin Island.

Beyond the coastal mountains, the inland area was entirely white, blanketed by the ice cap, and from the valleys scattered here and there, grand glaciers flowed into the sea.
Where glaciers met the sea, they formed vertical ice cliffs, their fracture surfaces gleaming white like the broken edge of a piece of chalk.

We arrived in Thule at 1 AM.
The wind was indeed cold, but the sun blazed high in the sky.
From the U.S. East Coast—the center of material civilization—we reached this far northern land at 76 degrees north latitude after just over ten hours of flight.

Ice Fossils

Greenland’s coastal range mostly formed steep cliffs that plunged into the sea.
In the valleys, glaciers flowed into the sea.
Therefore, obtaining flat land suitable for building a town proved difficult.
However, Thule was unusually blessed with terrain.
The bay possessed all the necessary conditions of a good port, and above it lay a flatland extending approximately fourteen miles to the edge of the ice cap.
This flatland appeared to be a gravel plain where snow melted during summer.
Though called gravel, it was actually moraine (glacial debris) brought by the ice cap.

They built an airport and erected buildings upon this moraine plain to create the town of Thule—a remarkably challenging engineering feat because while the surface appeared as an ordinary gravel plain, excavating just five feet revealed permafrost extending deep underground.
In other words, it was a permafrost zone.

In permafrost zones, the most troublesome aspect was the concern that constructing buildings upon them risked thawing the underlying permafrost.
If the permafrost melted, houses would either sink into the ground or tilt.
Therefore, the buildings in Thule were constructed with raised floors to allow wind to circulate underneath.
This method had already been attempted in places like North Manchuria and was nothing particularly new.
However, the large buildings being constructed those days completely enclosed the space beneath their floors, taking on the appearance of ordinary concrete structures.
At that time, there seemed to be many buildings constructed by assembling concrete panels.
Since the houses were of course heated inside, I inquired whether there was any concern that this might melt the permafrost beneath.
To my astonishment, however, I was told that all such buildings were equipped with refrigeration systems that circulated cold air under their floors year-round.
In that case, there would be no risk of the permafrost melting.
However, coming to the Arctic and hearing that they kept refrigeration systems running year-round left me somewhat astonished.
It was truly an American-style approach.

While permanent buildings might be manageable that way, civil engineering projects in permafrost zones presented numerous complex challenges.
The fundamental nature of the permafrost layer itself remained poorly understood.
It could not be dismissed as simply water seeping uniformly through soil and gravel before freezing.

For example, in permafrost regions such as Northern Europe, Greenland, and Siberia, there exists a strange phenomenon known as ground patterns.
In gravel plains, tortoise shell-like patterns form where relatively large stones gather along their ridgelines.
Typically these lines dip slightly while the hexagonal interiors remain raised.
Individual patterns measure anywhere from several feet across to rare specimens spanning nearly a hundred feet.
When seen from aircraft during survey flights, dozens of these formations spread across the terrain like cracked mud in a dried rice paddy.

As for the cause of these ground patterns, it had traditionally been thought that in areas where soil freezing and thawing recur repeatedly, gravel becomes displaced irreversibly through frost heave and thaw settlement. However, this year's research revealed that the reality was not so simple. When they conducted large-scale excavations at ground pattern sites, ice fossils emerged from beneath.

This research was primarily conducted by Argentine glaciologist Dr. Corte, so the location selected was a moraine plain approximately eight miles inland from Thule.
It was an exceptionally large-scale investigation—they brought in heavy construction tractors and completely removed the moraine across a 300-foot square area to a depth of six feet at the ground pattern site.
Then they discovered that beneath lay sizable blocks of ice scattered about.
Among them were ice blocks measuring over ten feet in size.

This ice came in two varieties: one being completely transparent ice, and the other being milk-colored ice due to countless trapped bubbles. Among these, the more mysterious was the transparent variety. This was truly crystal-clear, containing numerous small stones within. These small stones appeared to float within the ice, as though minnows swimming through a crystal-clear autumn stream had been frozen in place. What proved even stranger was that relatively large stones measuring about five inches in diameter also floated within the ice while being split apart. The manner of splitting was peculiar—one side gaped open like a mouth from which fine fragments fell—and these fragments remained trapped within the ice mid-descent from the fracture. It was as though stones had split and their fragments been caught mid-fall, frozen within the ice like snapshots. Truly mysterious things exist in this world.

The transparent ice and white ice appeared to have a certain regularity in their arrangement, and were also related to the patterns manifested on the ground pattern surfaces. Even in places without such ice, there were still ice blocks further below. This became clear when core samples were extracted using a diamond drill. In addition to these formations, there were also cases where the ice formed narrow streaks that wound their way through the permafrost like mineral veins. It looked like a giant ice serpent had been buried within the permafrost.

These ice masses lie within the true permafrost layer beneath the active layer (アクチヴ・レーヤー), where thawing and freezing cycles repeat.
Therefore, this ice should be considered to be ice that formed within the permafrost layer during geological ages of the past and has remained preserved until today.
In other words, they are ice fossils.

To determine the age of these fossils, they said they would perform tritium (³H) analysis; once some results emerge, it will surely yield fascinating insights.

Ocean of Ice

The ice cap was an ocean of ice.
An area six times the size of Japan had become a perfectly flat plain of snow and ice, so that standing within it, one felt entirely enveloped by a white sea.
Even at 10,000 feet of elevation, the expanse was so vast that the vista remained perfectly flat, with nothing visible beyond the horizon in any direction.

Fourteen miles inland from Thule, near the edge of the ice cap, lay a base called Tatoo.
This served as both the expedition’s base camp and a “port” for ice cap “voyages.”
Two hundred twenty miles northeast across the ice cap stood Site Two, an observation outpost.

Transportation during this period relied on airplanes and sled trains.
By plane the journey took two and a half hours; by sled, five days and nights.
Enduring five days of relentless sled jostling proved unbearable for most, making everyone prefer air travel—though landing required ski-equipped planes on compacted snow runways at destinations lacking proper airports.
Consequently, flights only operated under exceptionally favorable conditions.
My own outbound trip benefited from cooperative weather, allowing me to fly there in two and a half hours.
But when the retrieval plane crashed during my return journey, I had no alternative but to suffer five days of bone-rattling sled travel back.
Two people sustained injuries during this incident, though mercifully there were no fatalities.

It appeared that about two planes crashed each year. As far as the eye could see stretched pure white, with not a single landmark in sight. If the weather was clear, the horizon remained visible, but let a single fog bank arrive, and it vanished entirely. This fog over the ice cap was called a white-out and was greatly feared. In severe cases, visibility dropped to less than six feet. If one deviated even slightly from their course, they would have to walk all the way from Tokyo to Aomori before reaching the other side. For airplanes, matters grew even more troublesome—it became akin to flying through milk. Consequently, accidents were inevitable, but given that it was 750 miles to the North Pole, there was simply no helping it.

The transport of supplies was mainly conducted via sled trains, but cargo planes were also employed.
This was a large aircraft, so it could not land on snow.
Thus, it became a somewhat reckless method—they would descend to just above the snow surface and drop the supplies without attaching parachutes.
Since the snow wasn’t that hard, they usually didn’t break.
However, this low-level flying sometimes failed.
Last year as well, one had plunged into the snow about half a mile from the observation point.
Such large aircraft couldn’t be moved and were left abandoned where they lay.
Because the snow continued to pile up, it was already nearly half buried.
When viewed from afar, it looked like a whale surfacing its back above the sea.
In another two or three years, it would likely be completely buried.
And in a hundred years, someone might come to excavate the plane.

Sled trains were called Swings, which came in two varieties: passenger cars and freight cars.
Both consisted of sled-equipped vehicles formed into trains pulled by large snow tractors.
The passenger cars were arranged in three to four-car units containing both dining cars and sleeping cars.
Of course, sleeping berths proved essential since encountering a blizzard en route could stretch the five-day-and-night journey to about eight days.
Even with sleeping berths, enduring five days and nights of jolting at a maximum speed of three miles per hour made for an uncomfortable journey.
Passenger cars were typically accompanied by two freight train units.
Just transporting the round-trip fuel and provisions required one entire train.
Once you boarded this contraption, you had to resign yourself to being on a ship—there was nothing to do but entrust everything to the captain until reaching the distant port.

The destination port of Site Two was a small village with a population of about sixty people. Of these, approximately twenty were scientists. There were only two rows of fish cake-shaped tents, but this was the sole place on the entire ice cap where living beings existed. This year, the Danish observation team had also come, working near the coast around Thule.

Since human presence contaminated the ice cap, the laboratories—these too being either fish cake-shaped tents or snow caves—were located approximately half a mile away from Tent Village.

The fish cake-shaped tents were double-layered with fiberglass insulation, their interiors heated by kerosene stoves.
When sleeping, they doubled up the sleeping bags and burrowed into them.
This tent was, of course, built directly on the snow and secured only with sturdy ropes.
Not limited to tents, no foundations could be built for any construction work.
To reach bedrock would require building a 7,000-foot pillar.
Even without a foundation, this tent proved surprisingly sturdy; though a 100-knot wind blew this summer, it still wasn’t blown away.

The temperature was surprisingly mild during summer days.
When skies cleared, cirrus clouds would adorn blue heavens for four or five days—sometimes a full week.
Temperatures during these spells hovered just a few degrees below freezing.
Though the sun circled endlessly without true nightfall, its lower arc during designated nighttime hours brought slightly colder readings.
Each calm period inevitably yielded to blizzards that raged four or five days before clearing again.
This meteorological cycle maintained rigorous regularity.
Even stormbound days kept temperatures around minus ten Celsius—chilly but tolerable.
The true menace lay in wind-driven snow that reduced visibility below ten feet.
Travel between living quarters and labs via Weasel snow vehicles grew perilous when hundred-knot winds howled; on such days crews nearly lost their bearings.
They finally reached shelter only by colliding with one of the black runway markers lining their path.
That same day saw Denmark's expedition team lose two members.
One fell into a crevasse—his body later recovered.
The other wandered astray into glacial wastes.
That one would likely never be found.

Greenland’s ice cap has claimed the lives of many scholars to date.
Among these, the most tragic was Professor Wegener’s death.
The final resting place of this distinguished geophysicist—well-known in Japan as the proponent of continental drift theory—lay within Greenland’s ice cap.
Within the ice cap’s cave-bound existence, food and fuel had begun running out.
To secure provisions for two team members until the following spring, Expedition Leader Professor Wegener attempted to traverse the ice cap accompanied only by his faithful Eskimo guide.
Yet Greenland’s fierce blizzard soon claimed Professor Wegener’s life.
This occurred in 1930.
The loyal Eskimo buried the body in the snow, erected a marker, then wandered into the whiteness alone to cross the ice cap.
At this time, this Eskimo apparently understood the value of the observation records Professor Wegener had guarded with his life—and took them when departing.
But this Eskimo too ultimately never reached his destination.
When spring came, the rescue team that had retrieved the survivors first learned of Professor Wegener’s death and, through their search, discovered his body thanks to the marker.
The body had been reverently interred, yet the observation notebook alone was missing.
That notebook and the Eskimo must still lie somewhere within Greenland’s ice cap.
But the chance of their discovery will never come.

The Age of the Ice Cap

To investigate past climate conditions by collecting ice samples from the depths of the ice cap, it was first necessary to determine their age.
This research was initiated in 1954 and finally managed to trace back approximately eighty years.
For that eighty-year period, the age could be precisely determined year by year.
The clue lay in the vertical distribution of density.
Summer snow and winter snow differ in crystal form and compaction process.
Therefore, it was thought that summer snow and winter snow had different densities within the snowpack.
If regular fluctuations existed in the vertical distribution of density, each fluctuation could be interpreted as representing a year's snowfall.
However, when actually measured, the fluctuations proved extremely complex, resulting in a chart that left one unable to determine which peak corresponded to a single year.
The newer layers proved especially misleading, making the first twenty years or so particularly troublesome.
Beyond that point, a certain regularity began to emerge.

From this complex graph, albeit somewhat roughly, they forcibly identified peaks, assigned each as a single year, and gradually worked backward to determine the chronology.
However, within the layer they had estimated to be from 1914 using this method, a small amount of volcanic ash was found.
Upon investigating whether there had been any major eruptions around that time, they found records showing that Alaska's Katmai volcano had erupted catastrophically on June 6, 1912.
This would mean that this layer should more likely be assigned to 1912.
After applying this two-year correction and then searching backward for peaks, they were able to match the fluctuations with dates more accurately than before.
Thus, up until 1912, the ages were definitively determined.
This layer lies at a depth of approximately 110 feet from the surface.
Beyond that point, as the fluctuations became considerably more regular, determining the age became relatively straightforward.
If volcanic ash from Krakatoa’s great eruption of 1883 were to appear, it would be most valuable, but it has yet to be found.

However, this method could only trace back at best to around 1850.
In terms of depth, it stopped at two hundred feet.
When dealing with ice older than that period, the density differences diminished and peaks could no longer be identified.
Therefore, if one were to drill up to two thousand feet and collect samples, the age would have to be determined through some other method.
However, when dealing with such ancient ice, annual precision became unnecessary; as long as one could roughly determine which century the ice belonged to, that sufficed.

The method for determining these ancient dates had not yet been discovered.
The specimens collected that summer were to be split vertically, with half remaining in Greenland and the other half being transported to the Wilmette Snow Ice and Permafrost Research Institute.
It must have been about time they started loading them.
They had apparently said they planned to use four thousand pounds of dry ice.
The plan was to store this ice in a low-temperature room and examine it through various methods.
Analysis of tritium would of course likely be attempted as well, but whether it would succeed remained impossible to say at that point.

The problem I was assigned—namely, the work of measuring the elasticity and viscosity of ice—also has some relation to determining the ice cap’s age.
The ice from the deep layers of the ice cap, as I mentioned before, contains numerous bubbles.
These bubbles are formed from air that was present in the snow and became trapped within the ice.
When ice is subjected to high pressure and compressed over many years, it begins to exhibit malt syrup-like properties: its volume shrinks, compressing the bubbles within.
Therefore, the bubbles within the ice in deep layers are extremely small.
As the bubbles become smaller while trapped in the ice, the internal pressure increases.
At six hundred feet deep, it reaches about fourteen atmospheres.
When such specimens are exposed to sunlight and melted, the tiny bubbles emit crackling sounds as they burst.

The ice from the deep layers of the ice cap was a truly peculiar substance—ice containing innumerable minuscule, high-pressure bubbles. Such a peculiar thing probably had no equal elsewhere. Given that the substance itself was peculiar, its properties were equally peculiar; when measuring its elasticity and viscosity, numerous unexpected findings emerged. For instance, when temperatures dropped, this bubble-containing ice exhibited far lower viscosity than pure ice. In other words, it became a more perfect elastic body. Such phenomena were truly surprising, and these high-pressure microscopic bubbles must undoubtedly have been playing an important role.

When it came to the formation of these high-pressure microscopic bubbles, time played the most significant role.
Pressure alone did not cause ice to exhibit malt syrup-like properties.
If pressure was greatly increased, the ice would simply fracture.
When pressure beyond a certain threshold was applied over extended periods, deformation occurred in the ice as a function of time.
By investigating the karakuri mechanism behind these microscopic bubbles' formation and recognizing that considerable internal strain must exist within the ice matrix, researchers could calculate—based on bubble pressure—the compression time required up to that point.
Of course, this necessitated experimental investigation into the relationship between pressure and compression magnitude regarding such extremely gradual deformation.
Before all else, it proved crucial to thoroughly study this special ice's elasticity and viscosity.

When matters reached this stage, it became impossible to handle with just a month or so of research on the ice cap. I decided to content myself with merely identifying the problem, leaving no choice but to bring the ice samples back to Japan for thorough study.

Holding ice from the Kamakura period,

When it finally came to transporting the ice from atop Greenland's ice cap all the way to Japan, the matter proved exceedingly difficult.
The first major challenge was transportation from Thule to Wilmette’s research institute.
Since we hadn’t prepared thermoses, there was no choice but to use wooden boxes.
We packed a large wooden box with glass fiber insulation and placed the ice inside.
Fortunately, Dr.Weickmann had some dry ice remaining from his research on sublimation nuclei, so we crushed it and packed it tightly around the perimeter.
In addition, we received another case of dry ice to replenish in Philadelphia and boarded the plane.
The weight was significantly over, but when I explained that it would lighten by the time we arrived, they granted us leniency.

Philadelphia was in midsummer, with temperatures nearing thirty-five degrees.
In that scorching heat, we opened the box to find white steam billowing up—the ice remained intact.
Without delay, we poured out the prepared dry ice onto cobblestones, smashed it with ringing hammer blows, and fully replenished our supply.
Fragments of dry ice scattered everywhere, vigorously emitting plumes of white smoke.
Airport staff watched with puzzled expressions but offered no reprimand.
The half-day journey from there to Chicago meant our worries were over.

For three weeks thereafter, I experimented with this ice in various ways within Wilmette's low-temperature chamber, only to encounter increasingly peculiar phenomena.
When I reduced the temperature to approximately minus thirty degrees Celsius, these bizarre characteristics grew even more pronounced.
The temperature within the ice cap's depths stands at minus twenty-nine degrees Celsius.
Perhaps having returned to its ancestral cold, the ice relaxed into revealing its essential nature.

In the end, we decided to bring the samples back to Japan, prepared an extra-large thermos, placed the ice and dry ice inside it, and loaded it onto the plane.
The thermos’s insulation was reliable, but there was a risk of breakage.
Moreover, if laid horizontally, cold air would flow out, so unless we kept it upright ourselves and held it beside our airplane seats throughout the journey, there remained some cause for concern.
In essence, we had excavated ice dating back to around the Kamakura period from deep within Greenland’s ice cap and transported it all the way here.
We couldn’t possibly let it melt now.

The most troublesome issue was replenishing the dry ice.
In most stores, fifty-pound boxes were the minimum unit sold, and they wouldn’t sell just two pounds.
However, when we explained the circumstances, the Americans—being fond of unusual things—would either give us a portion or provide it free of charge.
With this troublesome cargo in tow, we spent three days at the University of Utah in the middle of the desert, one day in San Francisco, and another night in Honolulu, maintaining an outwardly leisurely journey as we brought it all the way to Japan.
Once we reached Tokyo, the ice could be entrusted to the Ministry of Transport’s low-temperature room in Mitaka, so there was nothing more to worry about.
In the end, we arrived safely in Sapporo, and this Greenland ice is currently taking a breather in Hokkaido University’s low-temperature room.

Trapped within this ice was air that Yoritomo himself once breathed.
I thought of entrusting the analysis of the carbon dioxide in this air to someone as well.
If it differed markedly from modern air, this would become a major issue warranting serious research.
There were scholars in Sweden conducting similar research on glacial ice.
This group had been conducting formal research for about three years by then, and their reports had already been published.
Because they handled trace gases, their precision was not yet sufficient, but it seemed certain that the carbon dioxide content differed slightly.

Once the experiments were completely finished, this ice would no longer be needed.
Then I thought I might make cocktails with this Kamakura-period ice and treat my esteemed rascal colleagues.