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Hidakasanmyaku Erimo Tokachi NP, Hokkaido
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The name came from a public call: “Tenma” pictures Tokachi’s Dosanko horses meeting Hidaka’s thoroughbreds and soaring skyward together. It turns the two regions’ horse cultures into one poetic road name.
Route 236 took 27 years to connect through the Hidaka Range: work began in 1970, and its final 12.2 km opened on September 25, 1997. The 4,232-m Nozuka Tunnel finally closed the gap.
Compared with the coastal Golden Road (Route 336), Route 236 shortened the Obihiro–Urakawa trip by about 30 km and 50 minutes. Nozuka Pass is also over 400 m lower than Nissho Pass.
Urakawa residents surveyed a mountain route in 1902, and Hiroo residents followed in 1923. In 1934, a railway survey judged a line feasible—but the Manchurian Incident stopped the plan.
Each June, a 20-person crew and 4 lift vehicles tend the 473 lamps inside Nozuka Tunnel. They keep the lights on while working—even though they get hot enough to burn—because switching them off would leave the tunnel dark.
Not entirely: when the road opened, racehorse farms bordered both sides of part of the route, and officials put up “Horse Crossing” signs. It’s a wonderfully literal reminder that this is thoroughbred country.
On the Hidaka-side approach to Nozuka Tunnel, a particularly difficult 3-km stretch required 5 bridges and 3 covered road sections. Even before the tunnel, the mountain called for serious engineering.
After the road opened, ties between the Urakawa and Obihiro chambers of commerce grew closer. Their cooperation helped start Urakawa’s Shinzan Cup youth soccer tournament in 1998.
On March 2, 2015, an avalanche that began in national forest across the Toyonigawa River damaged Route 236 at Nozuka Pass. The event prompted officials to examine weather-based advance road closures.
