The Playground of the Far East

"Walter Weston was an English clergyman, writer and mountaineer. I first encountered his work when I was researching nature writers who had visited Japan. Weston was famously captivated by Japanese landscapes, and he brought the Japanese Alps to the attention of the world with this book, The Playground of the Far East . My own glimpses of Japan stem from working on a campaign of conservation work led by Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the length and breadth of the country, and I can really identify with Weston’s descriptions of alpine Japan – its silence and solitude; its vast beauty. I remember he describes a ‘mighty tree-grown amphitheatre’ above a cliff that ‘falls in three great leaps a thousand feet’ – to me this is such a powerful image. This book conjures a new world on every page. My path was quite an instinctive choice: I always knew I wanted to study living things, plants especially. Yes I suppose there is a romanticism to these historical accounts but I don’t think it was this that was my compass: it was more the thrill of encountering a plant I’d long dreamed about finding. And the reality can be far from romantic – wading into mosquito-infested swamps and leech-stricken forests – but that just makes the reward even greater."