Kiyotaki Tunnel

01 / THE STORY

A light that decides whether you are invited

The tunnel sits in the Ukyō ward of Kyoto, north-west of Arashiyama, on the way to the foot of Mount Atago. Because it is only one vehicle wide, a traffic signal at each mouth lets traffic through in alternating directions. The best-known rumour starts there: if you reach the tunnel and the light happens to be green, the dead are said to be calling you in, so you should let it turn red and wait for the next green. Writers who repeat the rule describe it as a local custom, though they give no named person who started it.

Around that rule, retellings attach a long list of other claims: a woman in white falling onto the bonnet, handprints on the windows, footsteps or an old woman following on foot, screams, faces in photographs, and a tunnel that seems a different length going in than coming out. A curved mirror on the old pass beside it is said to show a child, an old woman, or your own face, or to show nothing at all if you stand beneath it at night. This dossier lists them as claims, not findings. None of the pages we opened identifies a witness by name, a date, or an official record.

The most famous part of the legend is a timing rule for a traffic light.

02 / THE PLACE

A railway tunnel that outlived its railway

The tunnel belongs to the Atago Railway (愛宕山鉄道), a company founded in August 1927 as a joint venture of Kyoto Dentō and the Keihan electric railway. Its purpose was to carry visitors to Atago Shrine, the mountain shrine associated with protection from fire. The plan had two parts. A flat electric line ran from Arashiyama to Kiyotaki, and a cable car climbed from Kiyotakigawa station towards the summit. A travel-history site gives the flat line as 3.39 km on standard gauge and the cable line as 2.13 km long, and notes that it was once Japan’s longest cable railway.

A railway-heritage survey gives the tunnel itself as 444 metres long and dates its completion to September 1929. Work had begun in June 1928, and the same survey says construction was troubled by heavy water seeping in. The flat line opened on 12 April 1929. Track was double from Arashiyama up to the tunnel and single through it, so the one-lane layout drivers meet today is a direct inheritance from the railway. The tunnel still has recesses along the wall that served as refuges, and the Arashiyama-side portal is the original.

The railway did not last long. In wartime it was classed as non-essential and its rails and materials were taken for military use. The cable line closed on 11 February 1944; the flat line is given as closing on 11 December 1944 on one site, and a heritage survey records a personal-injury accident on the flat line on 1 November 1944. The sources are not fully consistent on these dates, so treat the exact day of closure as approximate. In 1945 the empty tunnel was used by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as an aircraft parts factory, designated plant number 14 from 5 June 1945, reportedly with around 200 lathes installed under a roof built inside to keep out the leaks.

Dates here come from a railway-heritage survey and a travel-history site that agree on the main points (1929 opening, 1944 wartime closure) and differ on some days. Neither is an official municipal record.

03 / FROM RAIL TO ROAD

How a one-track tunnel became a prefectural road

After the war the old right of way was converted to a road. The railway-heritage survey places the opening of the former flat-line route as Kiyotaki Road in May 1960 and says the tunnel became a road tunnel in the same period. When it was converted, the Kiyotaki-side mouth was rebuilt and the tunnel was extended by about 50 metres, so the western exit is no longer the original portal. This matters for the legend: sources quote different lengths for the tunnel, roughly 444 metres in railway days and about 500 metres now, which is a plain engineering explanation for any inconsistent figure.

Today the tunnel carries Kyoto Prefectural Route 137. Vehicles cannot pass each other inside, so the entrance signals alternate the flow. A Kyoto bus route also runs through it. A one-way mountain road over Kokoromi Pass, the former carriage road, is available as a bypass from the Kiyotaki side. The signals show long waits; one visitor reports red phases of roughly three and a half minutes, and that long wait is part of why the ‘wait for red’ habit is easy to follow.

04 / THE TRACE

What can and cannot be dated

The earliest date we can document for the tunnel is 1929. The earliest date we can document for the haunting is much harder. None of the pages we opened cites a first publication, a magazine feature, a board thread or a news report with a date, and several say the stories were passed on online without an origin. The earliest dated web write-up we opened is a 2019 article from RocketNews24, which describes the tunnel as a famous ‘strongest haunted spot in Kyoto’ and then reports finding weekend crowds of young people and scooter riders rather than anything frightening. Other dated write-ups we found are blog or aggregator posts from 2021 to 2025.

That gap is honest, not an oversight. Plenty of pages assert that the tunnel became a haunted-place favourite in the 1990s or earlier, but none shows how that is known. The responsible statement is: the place is documented from 1929, the rumours are widely repeated in web articles from at least 2019, and their real starting point is not established.

If you have a dated magazine or forum citation older than 2019, it would change this section. We did not find one.

05 / VARIATIONS

Rumours that grew by accretion

The pages differ on what the signal rule means. One says a green light on arrival means you are connected to the spirit world. Another describes the habit of waiting for red as a local custom and notes that the green phase is short. A third suggests the idea arose because a light that turns red mid-passage makes drivers worry about meeting oncoming traffic. Several pages also claim that the signal malfunctions and has been linked to fatal accidents, but they give no accident record and one admits there is no repair history to check.

The mirror stories are even looser. The mirror on Kokoromi Pass points sharply downward, which looks strange, and the stories claim it shows a child, an old woman, or the viewer’s own death. One writer who inspected it observes that mirrors like this appear wherever the slope changes sharply, and calls the ghost stories baseless. Another pairs the pass with a claimed medieval execution ground and burial customs, again with no source. These are best understood as folklore layered onto an odd-looking object, not as a record of events.

06 / A CAUTION

Claims about deaths and past crimes

Some retellings say the tunnel is haunted by workers killed while it was dug, or by a woman who was attacked nearby and later took her own life. We treat these with particular care. The railway-heritage survey we read describes the water problems during construction and one accident in November 1944 on the flat line, but it mentions no deaths during construction of the tunnel. The pages that repeat the construction-victim story give no name, date or source, and the pages about the woman give only a vague ‘about twenty years ago’ or ‘more than thirty years ago’ that does not even agree with itself.

Because no source supports them, these should be read as rumour about real people who cannot answer for themselves. Repeating them as fact would be unfair to any family connected with the area and to anyone who simply lives nearby. Please do not treat the place as a memorial or a crime scene. It is a commuter road.

07 / THE WORDS

Terms worth knowing

Shinrei supotto (心霊スポット) means ‘spirit spot’, the standard Japanese label for a place reputed to be haunted, from a ‘test of courage’ spot to a famous one. Tonneru (トンネル) is the loanword for tunnel; the railway-era term is zuidō (隧道), used in the Kyoto sources, and the area’s Japanese name is 清滝, Kiyotaki, ‘clear waterfall’, after the river valley.

Kimodameshi (肝試し) is the ‘test of courage’ tradition of visiting an eerie place at night, and it is the habit this dossier asks you not to follow here. Kokoromi-tōge (試峠) is the Trial Pass, the old road over the ridge beside the tunnel. Atago-san (愛宕さん) is the affectionate name of the shrine, tied to protection from fire.

08 / CONTEXT

Why a tunnel became a haunted-place story

Tunnels are favourite settings for haunted-place stories in Japan for simple physical reasons: a dark bore, a curve that hides the far end, echoing sound and wet floors. The tunnel has all of these. The floor was wet when one blogger visited, the far exit is hidden by the curve, and orange lighting gives it a heavy atmosphere, according to a haunted-spot site.

It is also well placed. Mount Atago is a major mountain of belief, and the road to it passes a temple known for about 1,200 small stone statues (Atago Nenbutsu-ji), so the area already feels devotional and slightly other-worldly. Add a railway that vanished, a wartime factory in the rock, and a light that makes drivers pause in the dark, and the ingredients are ready. Most stories attach to the real routine of waiting at the signal: the legend is a ghost-story reading of ordinary traffic control.

09 / SAFETY AND VISITING

How to see it without causing harm

In daytime, you can see the tunnel as a rail-heritage site from a safe vantage point, ideally from the bus or a car, and the surrounding Arashiyama–Atago area is a normal destination for temple visitors. The tunnel is not closed, which is exactly why it is dangerous to treat it as an attraction. Vehicles including buses use it, and the space beside them is narrow. One haunted-spot site that describes the legends also advises against walking or cycling through.

At night, the combination of a one-lane road, limited lighting and groups looking for a thrill is the real hazard. Stopping on the road, filming from the carriageway, blocking the signal, or entering the old pass by foot are unsafe and disrespectful to residents. If you want the story, read it. If you want the place, go in daylight by bus or car, keep moving, and leave the signal alone.

10 / WHY IT WORKS

A ghost story built from a timing rule

This is interpretation, not record. Most haunted-place legends ask you to believe something about a past event. This one asks you to do something: wait. A rule you can obey makes the story feel participatory, and it costs only a few minutes, so travellers follow it half in jest. Each obedience is a small ritual that keeps the legend alive.

The story also borrows the tunnel’s genuine oddities. The single lane, the wartime history, the different measurements, and the downward mirror are all real, so the supernatural layer never has to contradict anything a visitor can see. Add the habit of repeating claims across aggregator pages without sources, and a quiet commuter road acquires a reputation larger than anyone can trace.

11 / TIMELINE

The record, in order

1. Aug 1927

   The Atago Railway company is founded as a venture of Kyoto Dentō and Keihan to carry visitors to Mount Atago.

2. Jun 1928

   Work on the flat line and its tunnel begins, according to a railway-heritage survey.

3. 12 Apr 1929

   The Arashiyama–Kiyotaki flat line opens; the single-track tunnel is recorded as completed that September.

4. 1944

   The railway is closed in wartime, with the cable line given as 11 February and the flat line as December on different sources.

5. 5 Jun 1945

   Mitsubishi Heavy Industries starts using the tunnel as an aircraft parts factory.

6. 1960

   The old right of way becomes Kiyotaki Road and the tunnel is opened to road traffic; today it works as a single alternating lane.

7. 2019

   The earliest dated web write-up we opened describes the tunnel as a famous haunted spot that is crowded and unfrightening by day.

12 / QUESTIONS

Common questions

13 / SOURCES

Follow the signal

Sources are listed by what they help establish. A source documenting a legend’s circulation is not proof that the supernatural event occurred.

14 / RELATED

Continue the trail

Browse the full archive or see every legend on the timeline.