History
Kasamatsu Station is the upper terminus of the Amanohashidate Funicular (天橋立鋼索鉄道) operated by Tankai Railway (丹後海陸交通) in Miyazu, Kyoto Prefecture. The 0.4 km funicular climbs 130 m at a maximum 461‰ gradient, connecting Fuchū Station at the foot with Kasamatsu Park at the summit — the latter offering one of the canonical views of the Amanohashidate sandbar from the 'matanozoki' (peer-between-the-legs) viewpoint. The funicular was opened on 13 August 1927 by Nariai Electric Railway (成相電気鉄道), suspended on 11 February 1944 as a wartime non-essential line, then reopened on 12 August 1951 under Tankai Riku Tetsudō (later Tankai Riku Kōtsū). The current cars were built by Alna Kōki in 1975 at 7.95 m long — among the shortest cable-car passenger cars in Japan. The winding mechanism was updated in August 2025 with equipment transferred from the discontinued Nose Electric Railway Myōken Cable Line.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
The funicular's lower Fuchū Station has an interior gradient of 78‰ — gentler than the 80‰ steepest section of the adhesion-driven Hakone-Tozan Line — so its platforms are smooth slopes rather than the customary stepped platforms used at almost every other Japanese cable car station.