Japan's pioneering, cold-water souls: Noboru Tagawa and Kasagi Hajime. Photo: Kasagi Hajime
The police officer pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and surveys the two figures standing in front of him. Noboru Tagawa jumps up and down on the spot to keep warm as the chill begins to seep through his damp wetsuit; Kasagi Hajime glances repeatedly over the cop’s dark epaulette as the next set peaks and peels along the sandbar. The officer shakes his head and continues scribbling on his flip pad. ‘How many times are we going to have to drag these two out of the water’ he wonders? “Ok, sign this,” he says, handing over the ballpoint to the shivering surfer. Noboru scribbles his name and passes the now damp paperwork back. The officer snaps his pad closed and turns on his heel, kicking the sand off his immaculate leather shoes as he heads back towards his car. “I’m coming back again tomorrow,” shouts one of the neoprene clad figures as the officer climbs into the driver’s seat of the Nissan Cedric patrol car and starts the engine. It’s 1978 and a quiet revolution has begun on this northern isle.
“Every time I went into the water back then, the police would come and kick me back onto the beach” says Noboru, taking a sip of his black coffee. “They would write me a ticket for responsibility, because there was no one else there. It’s like a statement to say I won’t do it again. But after writing it I would always tell them ‘I will be coming back tomorrow!’” This was a game of cat and mouse that would go on for the next three or four years. In Hawaii, Shaun Tomson was redefining the art of barrel riding at Off-The-Wall, and Rabbit was attempting to Bust Down The Door at Sunset and Pipe. On Hokkaido, Noboru was just trying to avoid being busted by the law for the simple act of surfing.
Japan was born from the waves as molten rock violently extruded from the Pacific ‘ring of fire’, creating an offshore archipelago that, in part, buffers the huge Asian landmass from the great ocean. There are 6,852 islands within Japan, Hokkaido being the northernmost and largest prefecture. It is the second biggest island with a population of over five and half million spread out over an area just smaller than Ireland. The majority of Hokkaido sits at latitudes to the north of Vladivostok, enduring winters that can test the hardiest constitution. The provincial capital Sapporo is a bustling metropolis of nearly two million; the country’s fifth largest urban conurbation. It provides a dazzling sensory collage that satisfies every preconception of urban Japan. Traffic, shopping, crowds, street dancing and the intense work ethic of a 24/7 society are set against a background noise of Pachinko halls and rafts of neon billboards that sing out competing advertising slogans. Yet, within thirty minutes of its center, you can be transported to wide valleys where shrines wait in shady woodlands and herons stalk shimmering paddy fields.
Summer time means sunny days immune from the sweltering humidity that weighs heavily on the main island and Tokyo in particular. The countryside is swathed in a lush green of forest and bamboo; misty mornings linger, while regular typhoon swells illuminate the Pacific coastline. Winter sees the whole island transformed into an almost featureless amalgam of monochrome hues as deathly winds slice in from the Siberian plains with the clinical sharpness of a Samurai’s cold Katana blade. White landscapes contrast grey skies, while temperatures plummet towards minus twenty and up to five meters of snow smothers the whole island. Hokkaido has always maintained a slight sense of distance from the main island, in part down to its history and in part to its physical separation. Until the opening of the thirty-three-mile-long Seikan Rail Tunnel in 1988, crossing from Hokkaido to Honshu meant a four-hour ferry ride.
