From George Masa’s 1915 arrival in Asheville until his death in 1933, the trailblazing Japanese photographer explored the Smoky Mountains, mapping trails and capturing the region’s grandeur and beauty in photographs that helped make the case for the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But Masa’s friends — and the researchers who followed — have long wondered: where did Masa’s love of the mountains originate?
We now know that it started long before his arrival in Asheville. Growing up in Shizuoka, a prefecture on Honshu, Japan’s largest island, Masa — born with the surname Takahashi, becoming Shoji Endo (sometimes spelled “Endow”) when he was adopted following his mother’s death, and only later known as George Masa — would often catch glimpses of Mount Fuji in the distance. At 12,385 feet, it is the highest point in Japan. The southern portion of the Japanese Alps also stretches into Shizuoka prefecture. Today more than ten percent of the land in Shizuoka is protected. When he had time and money, Masa went mountain climbing.
“Appreciation of mountaineering itself was born among a small elite of Japanese youth,” wrote Yasuji Yamazaki in the British “Alpine Journal v. 71” (1966). Masa was one of them. In 1905, at the age of 20, he joined the Japanese Alpine Club.…