Tokachidake Volcanic Activity was added to Your Favorites!
Daisetsuzan NP, Hokkaido
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Three years before the 1926 disaster, a molten-sulfur pool appeared at Tokachidake; in August 1923, sulfur reportedly shot 7.8 m into the air. The mountain’s warning signs were astonishingly literal.
At 4:18 p.m. on May 24, 1926, a blast broke away the volcano’s northwestern cone. Hot debris melted snow into a mudflow that raced 25 km to Kamifurano in about 25 minutes, causing 144 deaths and disappearances.
A sulfur mine beside Tokachidake’s craters produced 21,200 tonnes from 1955 until the 1962 eruption. Volcanic blocks punched through the workers’ dormitory roof, killing 5 and ending the operation.
The 1988–89 phase brought 28 eruptions. On Christmas Day 1988, a blast sent a small pyroclastic flow toward a mountain shelter, stopping about 100 m short; ash from the sequence spread as far as 140 km.
Tokachidake’s biggest known eruptive phase, 4,700–3,300 years ago, repeatedly produced explosive blasts and pyroclastic flows. Those flows reached downstream of Shirogane Onsen, while lava ran as far as the hot-spring area.
At Kusawake near Kamifurano, an exposed section shows the story in layers: 1897–1926 farm soil, gravel-rich mudflow, and imported soil laid afterward. Restoring the district’s rice fields took 8 years.
The earliest written records of Tokachidake activity date to 1857: Matsuda Shitarō noted active vents near Yakeyama, and explorer Matsuura Takeshirō described a burning fissure and black smoke rising from the slope.
The 62-2 crater at the center of volcanic monitoring was born in the 1962 eruption. That blast opened 4 craters on the southwest wall of the older Ground Crater and built a scoria cone around 62-2.
On October 26, 2026, JMA had Tokachidake at Alert Level 2, lowered from Level 3 on October 16. Earthquakes had eased, but crater heat, sulfur-dioxide emissions, and ground inflation remained elevated.
