Fame at last for Japanese explorer who almost reached the South Pole

Nobu Shirase left Japan in 1910, at a time when very few others did, and travelled south to eventually become the first non-European to explore Antarctica. Mick O'Hare tells his story

Shirase was disowned by his own government (Public domain)

Summer in the southern hemisphere approaches and with it the 110th anniversary of one of the most compelling contests our planet has ever witnessed. For two men it would ensure they passed into legend. Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s legacy was secured when he became the first person to reach the South Pole on 14 December 1911. His rival possibly achieved even greater fame dying in the attempt. Briton Robert Falcon Scott arrived on 17 January 1912, 34 days after Amundsen, and perished on the return journey. Their race to the pole has inspired books and movies, and they are immortalised in the scientific base at the pole which bears their monikers.

But they had a competitor, a man whose name lacks the resonance of his more illustrious contemporaries, but one who is now rising to prominence outside his homeland as his story is being rediscovered. The invisible third man was as keen as his rivals to book his place in history, but in his country there was little appetite for the challenge he was undertaking. In fact he was considered idiosyncratic and, ironically, unpatriotic.

Nobu Shirase was born in Konoura (now Nikaho), Japan, in 1861. At that time Japan’s ruling dynasty, the Tokugawa shogunate, forbade any person to leave the fatherland. If you attempted to do so and were caught, you would be executed. When the shogunate was overthrown in 1868 following the Boshin civil war and Japan slowly began to modernise under the Meiji dynasty, the law was rescinded but still very few Japanese chose to leave their nation. Shirase was the exception.