We tend to think of mountain climbing as either a form of religious worship or recreation: one embodies tradition and piety, while the other belongs to modernity and secularism. Yet this grouping rests on a shaky foundation of binaries—traditional/modern, religion/sport, sacred/secular—that oversimplify our relationship to the mountains and broader natural world. In fact, modern mountaineering brought new ways of thinking about the self, the natural world, and spirituality. Taking the case of Japan, this talk explores the formation of these ideas at the turn of the twentieth century—an era when foreign residents, especially British, began climbing mountains around the world, including Japan. While commonly thought of as a purely secular endeavor, this talk sketches out that formative period of mountaineering through the lens of critical religious studies, while exploring a larger question: why do we continue to seek out mountains and other natural settings in our own lives?

◆12:10 – 12:15 Introduction
　Session Chair: Assoc. Prof. Kim SCHUMACHER (Coordinator of Q-AOS)

◆12:15 – 12:40 Seminar
・Speaker: Associate Professor Caleb Carter (Faculty of Humanities Department of Philosophy Kyushu University)
・Title: The Spiritualization of the Outdoors: The Birth of Mountaineering in Modern Japan
・Key words: modern Japan, mountain climbing, spirituality, outdoors

◆12:40 – 12:50 Q&A

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