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Chubu-Sangaku NP, Toyama
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In May 2010, Jigokudani made “lava” without molten rock: burning sulfur flowed into several sulfur-lava streams. The largest was about 20 m long, 2 m wide and 15 cm thick.
Volcanic heat here warms a real bath: Mikurigaike Onsen draws its spring from Jigokudani, pumping it 340 m uphill across a 100 m height difference—without adding water or heating it.
Heian-era Buddhist accounts, including the later Konjaku Monogatari, tell of souls suffering in Tateyama Hell. Jigokudani’s steaming vents and bare ground gave those stories a vivid real-world setting.
In Edo Japan, Tateyama monks carried painted mandala scrolls from village to village, explaining the mountain’s Hell and Pure Land. About 50 Edo-period scrolls survive, found across Japan.
Jigokudani has several named “hells”: Blacksmith, Dyer, Dumpling Shop and Farmer. These unexpectedly everyday names label distinct parts of the valley’s steaming terrain.
On July 9, 1836, a small steam eruption occurred at Jigokudani. Its report survives in a copied official domain document, an unusually reliable early record of Tateyama’s volcanic activity.
At some vents, sulfur from hot volcanic gas cools into yellow crystals that stack into chimneys over 2 m tall. The towers are built by the very gas that escapes through them.
Some small cones here are mud volcanoes, not lava cones: fumarole activity brings clay mixed with groundwater or hot-spring water to the surface, building volcano-like mounds.
