Writing in 1919, shortly after his first solo winter ascent of Yarigatake (3180 meters), the then 24 year-old alpinist Itakura Katsunobu waxed poetic on the Japan Alps:

At the seat of heaven
where peaks and valleys come into view
I climb in a sea of whiteness
to see inside myself.

When the Special Higher Police, the dreaded Tokkō, returned his body to his mother and brother, it was hard to believe their official report that he had died of “a heart attack.”

The skin at his temples had been stripped away, and there were 12 wounds from what a physician friend described as “coming from a drill or the needles used by tatami makers,” some on his cheeks. (The police had actually used the metal pokers from a brazier on him.) There were cuts under his chin. His wrists and ankles bore rope marks from his having been suspended from a ceiling; and his lower torso, pubic area and thighs had turned an awful purple color from “relentless beating.” His penis and testicles were bloated and bore the same purple color. There are extant photos of the corpse, taken by his friends as it lay on the floor. The police had even taken the trouble to break his right index finger so that he would never again write a novella like Kani Kōsen (The Cannery Boat).

In September, after its warmest August on record, Australia's East coast was shrouded in thick red dust. Visibility was reduced to metres, forcing cancelation of flights and driving people indoors as some five million tonnes of soil blew in from the country's vast interior where the drought is in its ninth year. Early in the same month, Koreans were told that in future snow was likely to disappear in their country save for a few mountain peaks, and that their climate would become sub-tropical. Elsewhere, the Arctic sea-ice crumbles, opening navigation and exploration routes into the polar regions, glaciers retreat, half the world's tropical and temperate forests, wetlands, and coral have gone or are threatened; storms, floods, and other natural disasters ripple around the world. Scientists warn of approaching global catastrophe.