Mount Usu Summit / Crater Views was added to Your Favorites!
Shikotsu-Tōya NP., Hokkaido
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On Aug. 7, 1977, a pumice eruption burst from the summit crater after about 30 hours of felt earthquakes. Within an hour, its plume climbed 12 km—nearly 7½ miles—above Usu.
Before 1977, the summit basin held a wooded pond and pasture where cows grazed; hikers could wander inside the rim. The eruptions remade that familiar landscape into the crater country spread below this lookout.
Underground magma pushed up Usu-Shinzan; it was not a lava cone poured from above. The uplift reached about 180 m by 1982, exposing a slice of older Ogari-yama—whose name means “growing mountain” in a Tohoku dialect.
Some crater-basin seeds survived like time capsules: soil buried under more than 1 m of ash was dug up 20 years later, and plants sprouted when researchers watered it in a greenhouse.
A “geo-blessing” smoothie featured at the ropeway’s summit café mixed produce from four neighbors: Sobetsu apples, Toyoura strawberries, Date spinach and Toyako komatsuna. One cup mapped the whole volcanic region.
Gin-numa looks like one bowl, but repeated explosions in 1978 joined several neighboring vents to form it. Its walls preserve stacked eruption deposits—and geologists have used their layers to reconstruct the sequence.
The summit basin’s forest was devastated in 1977–78, yet about 30 years later a new poplar-dominated woodland had taken hold; some poplars reached 17 m tall. The green view is part of the eruption story, too.
The Geopark traces Usu to the Ainu word us, “bay” or “inlet.” From this lookout, the name has a literal coastal link: Funka Bay (Uchiura Bay) lies beyond the volcanic ridge.
Opened in 1965, the ropeway has itself felt Usu’s power: the Geopark says eruptions in both 1977 and 2000 directly affected it. Its route from Showa-Shinzan still brings visitors to the summit crater outlook.
