Police and rescue personnel were scrambling to locate missing mountain climbers Saturday after losing contact with at least nine of them in four central prefectures.
In Toyama Prefecture, police were searching for four people who disappeared as their Tokyo-based group headed for Mount Tsurugi in the Northern Alps.
In sprawling Nagano, the prefectural police said the search for an Osaka man lost in the Southern Alps had resumed by helicopter, but that two men from Aichi Prefecture remain missing on Mount Myojin, in the Northern Alps.