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Deep in Tottori Prefecture, a railway tunnel earned a grim nickname — the “Tunnel of Death” — from a string of reported tragedies local accounts trace to the tunnel’s construction. That railway-disaster version is the one this article previously carried. Checking it against Japanese-language sources turned up a real tunnel with the same core name, but a different history and a different reported haunting.
The Railway-Disaster Version
According to the earlier telling, construction began in the late 1930s on a line connecting Tottori and Yonago, and in 1938, workers reportedly uncovered an ancient burial site within the tunnel. It opened for passenger service in 1942, only to close within two months after a train derailed inside, with the loss of all aboard. Additional accidents and suicides were said to accumulate over the following decades. According to this version, Tottori’s prefectural government installed security cameras inside the tunnel in 2004 in response to ongoing reports.
We could not verify the 1938 burial-site discovery, a 1942 derailment, or government-installed cameras against any documented public record. A fatal 1942 derailment, if it happened, would likely appear in regional historical records; we simply couldn’t locate one.
The Tunnel Japanese Sources Actually Describe
The real tunnel matching this name and location is Motoya Tunnel (本谷隧道), also known locally as Funaoka Tunnel, connecting Shikobe and Ōe in what is now Yazu Town, Tottori Prefecture. It’s a 673-meter tunnel that Japanese-language haunted-spot sites date to 1972 — three decades after this article’s previous 1942 railway-opening claim — and it was built for road traffic, not rail. The haunting locals actually describe centers on a road traffic accident: a victim whose head was reportedly never recovered at the scene, with subsequent sightings of children’s and men’s figures inside the tunnel despite its isolated, low-traffic setting.
We’re correcting the record here rather than quietly rewriting it: the previous version of this article described a different vehicle (rail, not road), a different opening decade, and a different originating tragedy (mass derailment vs. a single traffic accident) than what actually appears to match this tunnel’s documented name and location. We could not independently verify the traffic-accident story either — it, too, comes from local retellings rather than a public record — but it’s the account that actually corresponds to Motoya/Funaoka Tunnel as named in Japanese sources, rather than the railway narrative this article ran with previously.
Can You Visit?
Motoya Tunnel remains part of Tottori Prefecture’s rural road network near Yazu Town. Given the tunnel’s isolated mountain setting and its association with a real reported traffic fatality, visitors should treat the site with the same seriousness given any location tied to a genuine accident, regardless of which specific details can or can’t be confirmed.
Was this a railway tunnel or a road tunnel?
Road. An earlier version of this article described a railway line and a 1942 derailment; the tunnel matching this name and location in Japanese sources is a 1972 road tunnel, formerly known as Funaoka Tunnel.
Did the prefectural government really install security cameras there?
We could not verify that claim, and it doesn’t appear in the local accounts we located for the tunnel’s actual documented history — it may have been conflated from a different haunted-tunnel story.
Ghost-Hunting Gear & Further Reading
- Books on Japanese haunted places and rural road folklore
- Tottori Prefecture travel and history guides
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