Japan · Nagano · Gunma · Shiga Kōgen
Shibu-tōge — Japan's highest paved national highway
Profile of Shibu-tōge — 2,172m, the highest point on a Japanese national highway, on the Shiga Kusatsu Kōgen Route between Nagano and Gunma.
Shibu-tōge (渋峠) is the highest point on any Japanese national highway, 2,172 metres on Route 292, the Shiga Kusatsu Kōgen Route. The pass is the traditional border between the old provinces of Shinano and Kōzuke and today sits on the boundary of Nagano and Gunma prefectures, inside Jōshin'etsu Kōgen National Park.
History
The modern road was completed in stages through the 1960s and 1970s as Route 292, linking the ski and onsen region of Shiga Kōgen with the hot-spring town of Kusatsu on the Gunma side. The pass itself had been used as a Buddhist pilgrimage and sulphur-mining route for centuries before any road reached it. A small traditional inn, the Shibu-tōge Hotel, marks the summit, and its signpost declaring "highest national highway in Japan" has spawned a small industry of tourist photography.
Riding it
From Yudanaka on the Nagano side, the road climbs steadily for 30 km through the Shiga Kōgen ski area, twenty-odd resorts interconnected by a single road, before the final ramp to the summit. From Kusatsu in Gunma, the climb is shorter and steeper, passing the bleached sulphur slopes of Kusatsu-Shirane-san, an active volcano whose crater lake Yumi-ike sits within a marked exclusion zone.
The road is closed for winter from mid-November to late April and is sometimes closed in summer as well when volcanic gas levels around Kusatsu-Shirane rise above safe limits. The Nagano side reopens earlier each spring; the Gunma side waits on volcanic conditions.
Along the way
- Yokoteyama summit café — at 2,307 m, advertised as "the highest café in Japan", at the top of the ski lifts beside the road.
- Kusatsu-Shirane-san — active volcano crossed by the pass, with a restricted crater zone around Yumi-ike lake.
- Yudanaka and Shibu Onsen — traditional hot-spring towns at the Nagano foot, base for the Jigokudani snow-monkey park.
- Kusatsu Onsen — one of Japan's three most famous hot-spring towns, built around the Yubatake hot-water field in the centre.
- Shiga Kusatsu Kōgen Route tour — the full onsen-to-onsen crossing over Shibu-tōge.