Abstract
The first turning point in the glacial landform study of the Japanese Alps occurred in 1940 when G. Imamura, a geographer, excluded many types of glacial landforms that had been found earlier that were not typical Alpine types. The second turning point was when T. Iozawa, a map-making engineer, claritied the distribution of glacial landforms in all areas of the Japanese Alps in 1963 based on aerial photo interpretation. For the 50 years since the second turning point, glacial landforms in Japan have been studied in various aspects and many findings have been recorded. In 2013, the third turning point ap-peared when Y. Kariya, a geomorphologist, and his colleagues reported that some moraines and glacial erosional forms are not of glacial origin but rather of landslide origin. Issues that now confront glacial landform study in the Japanese Alps are as follows : 1) to distinguish between glacial deposits and landslide ones by detailed inspection at exposures, 2) to separate landslide topography from glacial landforms, especially in the north part of Mt. Shirouma-dake, 3) to explore evidence of past summit ice-caps in the north part of Mt. Shirouma-dake, 4) to examine sub-glacial processes under active perennial snow-patch glaciers, which were reported recently in Mt. Turugi-dake, and Turkistan type glaciers, which are believed to be a dominant glacier type in the Ushiro-Tateyama Range. At the present stage, both glacial and landslide geomorphologists should resurvey and reconsider the glacial erosional and depositional processes of various types of glaciers and the consequent landforms in steep mountain terrain.
