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Unzen-Amakusa NP, Nagasaki
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Opened on 15 July 1957, Unzen Ropeway was the first ropeway installed in a Japanese national park. Unzen itself had joined Japan’s first national parks in 1934—just 23 years earlier.
Plush animals in the station shop come from Kuroi Yama, a 2001 picture book about creatures returning after Unzen’s eruption; its characters also inspire “Light Story” illuminations at the town’s winter Hanabōrō festival.
The pink Miyama-kirishima at Nita Pass has a pastoral backstory: these azaleas are toxic to cattle and horses, so on former grazing land they escaped browsing and formed showy colonies.
The station-shop shelves pair Unzen yusenpei crackers, baked with local hot-spring water, with crunchy dried flying fish from the nearby Ariake Sea—a tasty meeting of volcano and ocean.
During the Shōwa tourism boom, Nita Pass station’s 2nd and 3rd floors housed the Sanroku Grill, while the summit had its own restaurant. Outside, visitors could ride horses and buy hot corn.
Before the first ride, staff hike about 30 minutes to the summit station. There, a trained operator still runs the lift manually, adjusting speed and braking for wind and passenger load.
The ropeway’s original Mitsubishi motor, installed at its 1957 opening, is still in use. If electricity fails, a 52-horsepower Nissan gasoline engine can move the cars at 0.75 metres per second.
Locals affectionately call rime ice hanabōrō. Near the ropeway’s 1,300-metre-high summit station, wind-blown, supercooled droplets can freeze onto branches like delicate blossoms.
The roughly 500-metre ride uses just one support tower. Its two cable-linked gondolas balance one another: as one climbs away from Nita Pass, the other descends from Myōken.
From the gondola, scars from Unzen’s 1990s eruption are still visible on the slopes, while plants slowly reclaim the once-barren ground—a striking view of both volcanic damage and regrowth.
