What Happens if Japan’s Most Powerful Volcano Erupts? ⛩️ Documentary

0:06 You know, given the roof over our heads at the moment,

0:09 it might be tempting to assume that these are artificial

0:11 homes built to illustrate a point about something truly awful.

0:17 And yet, the unfortunate reality is these are real

0:19 homes that were once lived in by real families,

0:22 now buried 2 to 3 m beneath the soil.

0:24 Because it just so happens that these homes were in the firing line

0:28 of a destructive event that seems to hit

0:30 this part of Japan once every two centuries.

0:44 [Music] Japan lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire,

0:52 where four colliding tectonic plates have led to 111 active volcanoes.

0:56 In the last three centuries alone,

0:58 these giants have taken the lives of more than 20,000 people.

1:03 And the ultimate question is never if they'll awaken, but when.

1:07 We're traveling across Japan from snowy Hokkaido to subtropical

1:11 Kyushu to uncover the stories behind these ticking time bombs.

1:15 We'll meet the people who live in their shadow and those who dare to get closer.

1:19 From towns that have taken drastic measures to protect themselves to the most

1:24 catastrophic eruption in Japan's recorded history

1:27 and the one everybody fears could be next.

1:30 It's a story of fire and ash and an everpresent

1:33 threat that shaped the soul of a nation.

1:35 As we go in search of Japan's deadliest volcanoes,

1:43 [Music] the Japan Meteorological Agency runs one

1:48 of the most sophisticated volcanic warning systems on the planet.

1:51 But unfortunately, even the best systems aren't entirely foolproof.

1:56 On a clear September morning in 2014,

1:59 hikers are climbing the trails of Mount Antake,

2:03 Japan's second tallest volcano, with seemingly no signs of danger.

2:06 Then, without warning, at 11:53 a.m.,

2:09 it explodes for the first time in 35 years.

2:16 A colossal plume of ash and rock tears into the sky.

2:20 Within seconds, the tranquil mountain is transformed into a hellscape.

2:26 Shocking footage shows panicked hikers fleeing as a thick

2:29 cloud of toxic ash thunders down the mountain.

2:36 They try their best to outrun it.

2:37 But unfortunately, the wind isn't in their favor,

2:41 and they're quickly engulfed in the thick black clouds.

2:44 Tragically, for many on the mountain, this is the last thing they'll see.

2:49 [Applause] [Music] In the days that followed,

2:54 the world's media turned their gaze

2:56 to a mountain that had become an unrecognizable desert.

2:59 While rescue teams desperately dug out survivors on the summit,

3:03 63 lives were lost, making it Japan's most lethal eruption in over a century.

3:12 [Music] Japan is home to 10% of the world's active volcanoes.

3:15 And the worrying truth is 50 are under constant surveillance given

3:19 their proximity to populations and their risk of a potential eruption.

3:22 For some communities, the sign of smoke rising is merely a daily occurrence.

3:27 But for others, it's an ominous sign that everything is about to change.

3:37 Lake Toya, Hokkaido.

3:38 A scenic resort town enjoyed by 3 million tourists a year.

3:43 Travelers come here to escape, relax, and unwind.

3:46 Yet, concealed beyond the town lies an inaccessible landscape,

3:50 whispering stories the guy books are keen to emit.

3:53 Like along the shoreline of the lake

3:54 and the hotels facing outwards, you can miss it.

3:58 But turn around, look up,

3:59 gaze up 700 m to the towering strato volcano that looms large

4:04 overhead and you can see something fairly unsettling has taken place here.

4:08 Right, the entire town of Lake Toya is effectively behind a barrier.

4:13 A vast network of walls and dams separating it from Mount Usu,

4:16 a terrifying volcano that has unleashed its wrath no

4:20 less than four times in the last 150 years.

4:25 On March 27th, 2000, the Muran Meteorological Observatory detects a flurry

4:29 of small earthquakes beneath Mount Usu.

4:32 By the hour, they multiply and by the end of the day,

4:35 109 earthquakes have been recorded.

4:37 The following day, there are 590 earthquakes

4:41 recorded and 2 days later over 1,600.

4:48 [Music] On March 31st, Usu finally erupts.

4:54 A pillar of white smoke and ash burst through the sky as high as 3,200 m,

5:00 sending with it 290,000 metric tons of ash and volcanic debris

5:03 and reaching as far as Sapuro City, over 180 km away.

5:08 In the aftermath, 200 homes are destroyed.

5:11 But to the locals, this doesn't come as a surprise.

5:13 Mount Usu never stays quiet for long.

5:16 The previous eruption in 1977 saw over 20,000 people being evacuated.

5:21 And with nine major eruptions over the last 400 years,

5:24 every generation that's lived in this region

5:26 has been reminded of its destructive power.

5:31 Despite their image of explosive momentary destruction,

5:34 volcanoes don't often return to a state of calm after erupting.

5:38 The Mount Usu eruption in 2000 lasted for 18 months.

5:42 Imagine 1 and a half years of ash, steam,

5:45 and tremors, never quite knowing what to expect next.

6:06 Lake Toya is also home to a rather spectacular occurrence.

6:11 In 1943, a perfectly ordinary wheat field decided it had bigger ambitions,

6:16 like becoming a mountain.

6:18 Over the next two years, the ground steadily ballooned ever upwards until

6:22 the crops were replaced by a fullyfledged volcano.

6:25 Locals named it Shaw Shinszan, and to this day,

6:27 it remains the only mountain in Japan you

6:30 could have watched grow while eating your lunch.

6:32 But, as you'd expect, a volcano seemingly coming out of nowhere and growing

6:37 in 2 years led to some bizarre kind of events unfolding.

6:40 Number one, it was actually seen as a bad omen.

6:43 The Japanese government covered up the birth of Shaw Shinsza back in the day.

6:47 It wasn't until 1948, a volcano conference in Oslo,

6:50 that it was formally announced.

6:51 But the second bizarre thing that happened was as there was no public

6:54 knowledge of this volcano and no scientists on hand to kind of monitor it,

6:58 postmaster called Masal Mimatsu who worked

7:00 at a neighboring town kept track of it

7:02 and actually kept diaries and kept a really kind of comprehensive report on it.

7:05 Best of all though, he actually bought the land that the volcano is on.

7:09 So technically this is private property.

7:10 So if you ever see a volcano growing in your back garden,

7:13 buy the land and uh keep a reading of it.

7:14 You might get a free trip to Oslo.

7:17 Yeah.

7:18 There is a tragic irony to life in Toyok,

7:21 a hotring town whose very existence depends

7:23 on the geothermal energy of Mount Usu.

7:25 Yet, where residents live with the constant awareness

7:27 that they may have to evacuate at a moment's notice.

7:30 And to the locals, such events haven't been simply consigned to history.

7:34 Around the base of Mount Usu,

7:36 a 2 km stretch of land has been deliberately preserved,

7:38 left exactly as it was in the aftermath of the 2000 eruption.

7:43 Among the ruins stands the Toyoko kindergarten, a silent,

7:46 haunting reminder of just how suddenly normal life can be swept away.

7:53 It's very eerily quiet up here, apart from the the snow gently falling around.

7:57 And you know, most Japanese towns that are affected by disasters

7:59 tend to get rid of the destruction that was left thereafter.

8:02 The town of Tora has kind of embraced it.

8:04 And around the volcano,

8:05 you can see places like this that have been left up uh as a sort

8:08 of ominous reminder to the locals and to travelers coming to this region.

8:12 And there's lots of rocks strewn throughout the playground.

8:14 And that was what led to the damage here on this building.

8:17 They flew out the volcano and crashed into the sides of the building,

8:20 smashed windows, the roofs caved in.

8:22 From a distance, the building looks mostly structurally sort of intact.

8:25 But it's inside it looks like a real horror show.

8:28 And the playground is also kind of littered with burnt out,

8:32 broken vehicles like the old school bus,

8:34 which is a, you know, pretty haunting sight to witness.

8:39 [Music] The town surrounding Mount Lusu have been shaped both

8:44 physically and culturally by their uneasy relationship with the volcano.

8:48 Which raises the question,

8:50 why would anyone choose to live in the shadow of something so volatile?

8:54 To find the answer, we travel 1300 km south

8:56 to a Japanese island with a volcano that doesn't just erupt occasionally,

9:01 it breathes fire almost every single day.

9:11 Sakurajima is Japan's most active volcano.

9:15 Since 1955, it's erupted almost continuously

9:18 with some years seeing over a thousand eruptions.

9:20 For the half a million residents of Kagashima City,

9:24 life means living at the mercy of the wind.

9:26 On a bad day, it can rain a blizzard

9:28 of volcanic ash straight into the heart of the metropolis.

9:31 Nowhere else in Japan offers such a front row seat

9:34 to both the beauty and the menace of living beside a volcano.

9:39 Once a true island, Sakurajima was separated from the mainland

9:43 of Kagashima prefecture until the great Taiishu eruption of 1914.

9:47 One of the most powerful in Japan's history that the landscape changed forever.

9:51 Almost 10 billion tons of lava poured forth with the molten

9:55 flood filling the 400 meter straight separating it from the mainland,

9:59 permanently welding the island to the Osumi Peninsula.

10:02 Sakurajima's fusion with the mainland may have been a geological marvel,

10:05 but it came at a terrible cost with 58 islanders losing their lives.

10:10 And today, scars from the 1914 eruption remain etched

10:13 into the communities through landmarks that survived the event.

10:16 Honestly, one of the most beautiful yet haunting Tory gates that I've ever seen.

10:21 You know, red wooden Tory gates get all the acclaim,

10:24 but it's actually the stone ones that I think are more

10:26 poignant because you get a sense of the sheer passage of time.

10:28 In the case of this Tory gate, it's actually 3 m tall.

10:31 You just wouldn't know it because 2 m of it buried

10:34 beneath the soil in the volcanic ash that fell here in 1914.

10:38 In just the space of one day,

10:41 2 m of ash fell from the sky, smothering 687 homes.

10:45 Luckily, the villages knew it was coming.

10:47 Due to water in the wells actually boiling in the days ahead,

10:50 fish dying in the sea, Sakurajima sort of announced what was about

10:54 to happen in the days leading up to it.

10:56 After the 1914 eruption, the uh the town was thinking of excavating it.

11:00 And then one of the elders of the community decided

11:02 why not leave it as a reminder to future generation.

11:04 It's one of the few reminders of what happened back over

11:08 100 years ago and become a tourist attraction in its own right.

11:13 It's not something you see every day.

11:16 And yet, the constant clouds of smoke that eject

11:18 from Sakurajima go mostly unnoticed by the people living here.

11:21 When filming this documentary,

11:22 the island was at an eruption warning level of three,

11:25 preventing people from going within close proximity of the volcano

11:29 due to the likely event of an eruption,

11:31 with level five being an all-out evacuation.

11:33 Something made possible by the 24-hour ferry that runs

11:36 to and from Kagashima City across the sea every 20 minutes.

11:41 Still on a good week,

11:41 the only sign of the volcano's wrath lies in the governmentissued

11:45 ash removal bags that quietly fill the island's streets.

11:48 Just another part of everyday life for those who live here.

11:51 But what's it really like to live and grow

11:53 up in the shadow of Japan's most active volcano?

11:56 I spoke with Hikarisan, who helps promote tourism in the region.

11:59 Fukushima, the director of the Sakurajima Museum, and Naman,

12:03 a local who's given kayak tours around the volcano for many years.

12:08 What's this uh bag you've got here, Kylie?

12:11 It's called Kokuhai Buro, meaning overcoming volcanic ash.

12:16 Oh, wow.

12:17 Yeah, it's this bag is distributed by the city, Kagosima city.

12:22 So, the residents sweep the volcanic ash and put them inside a bag.

12:27 Some areas they have to clean like almost every week.

12:31 Every week?

12:31 Yeah.

12:32 I mean, I'm bad enough cleaning my house as it is.

12:35 I'll take that home to my my partner Charlotte.

12:51 She'll love that.

12:55 Would it be scary living here?

13:19 I know you live across the bay, right?

13:22 But would would you ever consider living on the island?

13:25 Yeah, in my heart I always say good morning Sakuraja.

13:29 Yeah, it's like family member.

13:32 Like a family member.

13:34 Who's sometimes beautiful, sometimes very angry.

13:37 Yeah, it's next time.

13:45 Next time.

13:45 Perhaps it's not so unreasonable to feel

13:48 a sense of reverence towards these towering geological giants,

13:51 particularly when viewed through the lens of Japanese history and belief.

13:55 In Shintoism, volcanoes are thought to be

13:57 the dwelling places of powerful deities known as kami.

14:00 For centuries, pilgrims would ascend these sacred

14:02 peaks to offer prayers and appease the gods,

14:04 hoping their devotion might prevent the next eruption.

14:08 Even the origin of volcanoes in Japanese mythology is steeped in drama.

14:12 According to ancient law, the divine creators of Japan,

14:14 Izzanami and Izanagi, gave birth to the fire god, Hagatsuchi.

14:18 But the child emerged wreath in flame, in doing so, mortally wounded his mother.

14:23 Stricken with grief,

14:24 Ianagi drew his sword and cut the god of flames into eight pieces,

14:28 tossing them into far-flung locations across Japan and sprouting

14:32 the eight major volcanoes of the Japanese islands.

14:35 And honestly, it's not hard to see why volcanoes were once feared as the wrath

14:39 of the gods when you look at the deadliest eruption in Japanese history.

14:43 For that, we head to our final destination.

14:53 [Music] Now, if you were to come here without context,

15:00 it might be safe to assume that this destruction was caused by an earthquake.

15:04 That is until you look up at the horizon towards Mount Unen,

15:08 a smoldering giant that looks innocent enough, but make no mistake,

15:12 this volcano is an absolute monster because it's not

15:16 only the most deadly volcano in all of Japan,

15:18 one of the deadliest volcanoes on the planet.

15:26 Japan is in the midst of the Edeto era,

15:29 a time of peace, isolation, and rigid control.

15:31 But in the quiet coastal town of Shimabara,

15:34 something far less orderly is unfolding.

15:36 For months, the ground has been restless.

15:38 Small tremors ripple through the earth around Mount Unen,

15:41 unsettling villages and local monks alike.

15:43 On Mount Mayama, a lava dome has begun to bulge ominously,

15:47 an unspoken warning that few can yet comprehend.

15:51 Then on May 21st, the mountain finally gives way.

15:54 What follows is the deadliest volcanic disaster in Japanese history.

15:58 A powerful magnitude 6.4 Four earthquake strikes the region,

16:02 violently shaking Mount Mayuyama and dislodging

16:04 the unstable lava dome perched on the summit.

16:08 A colossal landslide tears down the mountains western slope,

16:11 obliterating everything in its path.

16:14 Entire neighborhoods in Shimabara vanish in seconds

16:17 with 5,000 lives lost almost instantly.

16:20 The avalanche continues,

16:22 crashing into Aryak Bay and displacing an enormous volume of water,

16:25 unleashing a mega tsunami.

16:27 As the landslide slices Mount Mayyama down from 760 m to just 400,

16:33 the waves in the bay rise an astonishing 57 m,

16:37 slamming into Kumamoto across the sea.

16:39 By the time the tsunami loses its power,

16:41 it's reached as far as 24 km in land and taken the lives of over 10,000 people.

16:47 It's a cataclysmic event that Kyushu never saw coming

16:50 and a reminder that one of the most dangerous

16:52 things about volcanoes is the inability to predict just

16:55 what part of the eruption will become the deadliest.

16:58 There's no greater example of this than

17:01 the catastrophe that struck 200 years later.

17:03 In 1991, after months of volcanic activity,

17:06 Mount Unen made its presence known once again with tragic consequences.

17:11 In the days leading up to the eruption,

17:14 anticipation had been building with news crews,

17:16 photographers gathered at the base of Mount Unen,

17:18 staking out fixed positions in the hope

17:20 of capturing the moment the volcano brought to life.

17:24 Volcanologists expected a dramatic eruption.

17:26 Instead, the mountain began to swell.

17:29 A lava dome started forming at the summit.

17:32 Thick, viscous magma rising slowly,

17:34 reshaping the landscape like a balloon filling with molten rock.

17:37 But these domes were inherently unstable,

17:40 fragile, pressurized, and prone to sudden collapse.

17:44 Then on June 3rd, 1991, at 400 p.m., the worst case scenario unraveled.

17:53 [Applause] The dome gave way, triggering a violent pyrolastic flood caught

18:05 on film with this terrifying footage.

18:08 A lethal surge of superheated gas, ash,

18:10 and volcanic rock up to a,000° C in temperature

18:13 tore down the mountain side at 200 kmh.

18:17 Many of the media and news teams that were assembled were unable to escape,

18:21 including amongst them world famous

18:23 French fulcanologists Katier and Maurice Craft,

18:25 who had traveled to Japan to document the eruption.

18:28 Tragically, 43 people were killed, many of them members of the media,

18:32 waiting to witness history, and sadly instead becoming a part of it.

18:41 Wow.

18:43 Having spent many of my years up in Tohoku

18:46 along the coastline where they've basically terraformed it,

18:48 reshaped it after the tsunami,

18:50 I'm used to seeing massive infrastructure projects,

18:52 but the scale of this is breathtaking.

18:55 These dams, right, to prevent mud flow coming down the mountain side.

18:58 It's almost like stepping stones for a giant.

19:01 My god, absolutely incomprehensible.

19:04 Even now, you know, about 30 years after the last eruption,

19:08 it's sobering to think that uh the defenses

19:10 that are being built now could be protecting people,

19:12 you know, 200 years into the future here in this part of Japan.

19:17 This is where the iconic shot of the pyrolastic

19:20 flow was taken that barreled down the mountain,

19:23 destroying farmland and taking the lives of dozens of people,

19:26 including uh Katia and Maurice Craft.

19:28 And you can see amidst the trees and the foliage

19:31 that's actually kind of sprung it back into life,

19:35 these huge massive boulders of rock,

19:37 chunks of the volcano that fell down, came down with the eruption,

19:42 strewn throughout the forest and the fields beneath Mount.

19:45 Even today, it's uh ominously kind of smoldering at the top.

19:50 Little bit uh little bit scary looking up at that.

19:55 It's an unsettling thought that it might erupt

19:57 once again in the not too distant future.

19:59 And yet for many, the spectre of the volcano hasn't

20:02 been a deterrent for those wanting to live and work here.

20:07 While construction crews raise concrete walls to keep people out,

20:09 the locals quietly edge ever closer.

20:11 And when I say locals, I don't just mean the humans.

20:16 Emanuel Carlon's lived in Shimabada for several years,

20:19 promoting Unzen's Hell's Valley hotspring town.

20:21 He also shows me the real reason the local

20:24 cats have fallen in love with the place.

20:27 That's uh Oh, son of a That's really hot.

20:30 Right.

20:30 Right.

20:31 You can really feel, you know,

20:32 the power of the volcano just by touching the ground.

20:34 It's very It's very hot.

20:35 You could cook a Sloin steak on that.

20:37 Yeah.

20:37 And we should not probably very clean,

20:41 but but that explains why there's so many cats around here, right?

20:45 Yes.

20:45 They love it.

20:45 I mean, this hell over here, it's it's the volcanic gases are not toxic.

20:50 So, it's actually, you know, there's living things going around over here.

20:53 And it's not too hot.

20:54 It's just the right temperature.

20:57 Very cute.

20:57 No location in Japan would be complete without dozens of cats having a fight.

21:03 Very cute.

21:04 Cats benefit from the heat, and so do the hotels.

21:07 Inn built around the hellish landscape get to save roughly 40%

21:10 on their gas bills by sending

21:12 their pipes through the scalding hot natural steam.

21:16 But is it really worth the trade-off?

21:18 operating so close to something so destructive given what

21:20 could happen if and when it all goes wrong.

21:24 In a sense, Devil can has been active for thousands of years and people,

21:26 you know, sometimes it erupts, but people keep living here.

21:29 They want to live here.

21:31 They also want to protect this environment.

21:33 That's something that struck me actually looking

21:35 at the footage of uh mountains and in like 1991, 1992, the destruction, right?

21:40 You would think people wouldn't want to live there

21:42 and yet there is a lot of people living there.

21:45 the city the town sort of recovered as a certain point you start thinking about

21:49 it as as a living thing also almost as a person or as a god

21:52 itself and you know as an entity itself it's pretty fair you know it erupts

21:56 every 200 years or so so when you know that it's about 200 years you're like

22:00 ah maybe I can get a long vacation or maybe I can start to look

22:04 into different options but then after that you

22:06 know that it's going to be you know

22:07 pretty pacific for for the rest of the years let's hope so anyway let's hope

22:10 it is another 200 years cuz mountains then

22:14 certainly doesn't seem to play by the rules.

22:17 Exactly.

22:19 At the base of Unzen on Nagasaki's west coast lies the hottest onen town

22:23 in all of Japan with the spring water

22:25 reaching an astonishing 105° C from the source.

22:30 The town happens to be called Obama.

22:31 The second town in Japan with the name of the former

22:34 president and with no affiliation with the man himself,

22:37 though of course the locals have gleefully stuck his face on a towel.

22:41 I meet with Nahok Kato who works in Obama but is

22:45 originally from Chiba and she wouldn't choose to be anywhere else.

22:56 Oh yeah.

23:21 Oh yeah.

23:44 Oh, wow.

23:46 That's a beautiful thing.

23:46 Very beautiful.

23:48 And you have a We love Obama towel.

23:52 President Obama is the mascot of Obama Town.

23:59 Come on, Obama.

24:00 Get down there.

24:01 Get down there now.

24:03 Enjoy the foot.

24:04 Yes, we can.

24:05 Yes, we can.

24:06 Get in the foot path.

24:06 Obama, if you're watching, she definitely is.

24:12 Despite the destruction Unen unleashed both centuries ago and in living memory,

24:18 chances are you've never heard of it.

24:20 But what about the volcano everybody knows?

24:23 the one everybody fears erupting perhaps more than any other.

24:26 With over 300,000 climbers every year,

24:29 it's easy to forget that Japan's most iconic

24:32 mountain is in fact a ticking time bomb.

24:35 When Mount Fuji last erupted from 1707 to 1708,

24:39 it blanketed the region in 800 million cubic meters of ash.

24:43 Tokyo, over 100 km away, was plunged into darkness.

24:47 If the same eruption were to happen today,

24:49 with almost 40 million people living around the mountain,

24:51 it wouldn't be so much a natural disaster as a full-blown national emergency.

24:58 Experts predict it could bury the capital in up to 30 cm of ash.

25:03 Enough to paralyze transport, knock out power grids,

25:06 and grind the world's most populated city

25:08 to a halt with an estimated $20 billion of damage.

25:12 Of the two times I've climbed Mount Fuji,

25:14 I'll never forget standing on the summit, peering into the vast crater,

25:18 a crater large enough to swallow a whole town

25:21 and wondering what it might still be holding back.

25:24 The seismic data tells a rather worrying story.

25:26 When I spoke to Professor Kenji Satake at the earthquake research institute,

25:30 he pointed to the Nankai trough, a fault line that many believe is overdue.

25:35 Eruption Mount Fuji may be related to the earthquake in Nankai Trough.

25:39 In 1707, earthquake happened.

25:42 Then several months later, Mount Fuji erupted.

25:44 That's where both related to the subduction of the Philippines plate.

25:49 Along the khai trough, the government says the uh chance of the next

25:53 earthquake in the next 30 years is 70 to 80%.

25:56 An earthquake here could set off a chain

25:59 reaction that triggers Mount Fuji with some

26:02 experts saying there's a 5 to 10% chance

26:04 of an eruption within the next 30 years.

26:06 For now, Japan's most beloved mountain sleeps.

26:08 But one day it will wake and when it does the whole world will be watching.

26:19 My god, this is absolutely stunning.

26:23 This is Hibaruyama Flower Park at the base of mountains.

26:25 And throughout this documentary,

26:27 it's been fascinating hearing about the locals complicated relationship.

26:30 The volcanoes wreak unimaginable damage on this country

26:34 and yet they also give back.

26:35 the nutrients in the soil, the hot springs beneath our feet,

26:39 there are clear benefits to having volcanoes in your country.

26:41 And you know, while tsunamis and earthquakes might come and go,

26:44 volcanoes are an everpresent symbol of Japan's relationship with nature

26:48 and those kind of seismic threats they face every single day.

26:53 And for me, having traveled to Hokkaido,

26:56 Kagashima, to Unzen, hearing people's stories, experiences,

26:58 and their relationship with these volcanoes,

26:59 I've come to appreciate that Japanese culture

27:02 simply wouldn't be the same without them.

27:04 that we have to be grateful.

27:05 And even the absolute monster that is

27:08 Mountain Zen looks particularly stunning today

27:10 as we stand here in the very flower garden that helped create [Music]