Kurama-dera Cable

The line runs between Sanmon station, at the temple's main gate, and Tahōtō station higher up the mountain, with no intermediate stops and no passing loop — one car simply shuttles up and down a single track. It is laid to 800 mm gauge and overcomes an elevation difference of 89 metres on a maximum gradient of 499 per mille (about 26 degrees), one of the steeper grades found on a Japanese funicular. The stations are integral to the temple complex: Sanmon station is housed within the Fumyōden hall, completed in 1992, while Tahōtō station shares its building with the Tahōtō worship hall built when the line first opened.

Kurama-dera built the funicular to ease the climb for elderly and less mobile worshippers, and the line opened on 1 January 1957 between Sanmon and Tahōtō. As first built it was an ordinary iron-wheeled funicular running two cars on 762 mm gauge track. By the mid-1970s the original equipment had deteriorated badly — it was found to be near the point of abandonment during routine inspection — and the line was rebuilt, reopening in January 1976 with a second-generation car converted to a rubber-tyred system on 800 mm gauge.

The rolling stock has been renewed several times, and the cars carry the affectionate name Ushiwaka-gō after Ushiwakamaru, the childhood name of the warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who according to tradition trained in his youth at Kurama-dera. A third-generation car, Ushiwaka III, entered service on 8 August 1996; with it the overhead contact wire was abolished in favour of collection from beside the track. The line then closed for a thorough renewal of equipment and car on 11 May 2015, and reopened on 20 May 2016 with the fourth-generation car, Ushiwaka IV. The line has also been tested by the mountain weather: English-language sources record that it was severely damaged by Typhoon Jebi in 2018, when around 180 fallen trees blocked the route, and that it resumed service about fifty days later.

What most distinguishes the Kurama-dera Cable is that it charges no fare in the ordinary sense — it is the only railway licensed under the Railway Business Act that is currently free to ride (the Mino'o funicular was formerly free as well). Instead, visitors make a donation toward the upkeep of the temple's halls — one unit is 200 yen, or 100 yen for elementary-school children — and Kurama-dera lets them ride free as a form of thanks, so that the 200-yen donation serves in effect as the fare. The temple frames the line not as a commercial enterprise but as a convenience for those who find the climb difficult; treating the payment as a donation rather than a fare also keeps it within the temple's tax-exempt religious activity rather than as taxable profit-making.

The temple openly encourages able-bodied visitors not to take the funicular at all, but to walk the old pilgrimage path instead, on the grounds that experiencing the mountain on foot brings one closer to its sacred presence; the route passes Yuki Shrine, the "Maō Falls," and other sights along a road once trodden by the young Yoshitsune. The funicular's upper terminus connects on foot to the rest of the temple precincts, and at the bottom Sanmon station lies about a five-minute walk from Kurama Station on the Eizan Electric Railway's Kurama Line, the conventional line that brings most visitors up from central Kyoto to the foot of the mountain.

• 19571 January: the line opens between Sanmon and Tahoto as an iron-wheeled funicular running two cars on 762 mm gauge track.
• 1974The line is found to be near the point of abandonment when deterioration of the infrastructure is discovered during routine inspection (per EN Wikipedia).
• 1976January: the line reopens with a second-generation car converted to a rubber-tyred system on 800 mm gauge.
• 19968 August: the third-generation car, Ushiwaka III, enters service; the overhead contact wire is abolished in favour of collection from beside the track.
• 201511 May: the line closes for a thorough renewal of its equipment and car.
• 201620 May: the line reopens with the fourth-generation car, Ushiwaka IV.
• 2018The line is severely damaged by Typhoon Jebi, with around 180 fallen trees blocking the route; it resumes service about fifty days later (per EN Wikipedia).