Shinmoedake

Where it sits. Shinmoedake is a 1,421-metre andesitic stratovolcano in the Kirishima range, straddling the boundary between Kirishima city in Kagoshima Prefecture and Kobayashi in Miyazaki Prefecture, in the interior of southern Kyushu. It is one of more than twenty vents in a volcanic cluster that also includes Karakunidake, the range's highest point at 1,700 metres, and the sacred cone of Takachiho-no-mine. The whole group lies within Kirishima-Kinkōwan National Park, whose Kirishima section was designated in 1934 as part of Japan's first tranche of national parks. Shinmoedake's summit crater is roughly 750 metres across, and until 2011 it held a pale green crater lake that gave the mountain its distinctive look from the air.

A volcano that will not settle. Shinmoedake has erupted repeatedly through recorded history, including a major event in 1716–17, and further activity in 1959, 1991 and 2008. On 26 and 27 January 2011 it produced a sub-Plinian eruption that threw ash more than seven kilometres up, dusted Miyazaki and Miyakonojō, shattered windows in Takaharu with pressure waves and grew a lava dome in the crater — the crater lake boiled away and has not returned. Further eruptions followed in October 2017 and in March 2018, when lava overflowed the crater rim and ash plumes again closed roads and railways. The Japan Meteorological Agency maintains a five-level alert for the mountain and adjusts an exclusion radius around the crater accordingly, so the summit trail is open in some years and firmly shut in others.

On screen. Shinmoedake supplied the exterior of the most famous villain's lair in the Bond series. In You Only Live Twice (1967), Ernst Stavro Blofeld operates a rocket base hidden inside a volcano whose crater lake is a sliding metal roof; when the roof opens, the Bird One spacecraft launches from beneath it to swallow American and Soviet capsules in orbit. The aerial photography of the crater was shot over the Kirishima range, and it is Shinmoedake's circular crater and lake that establish the location before the film cuts inside. Everything within was Ken Adam's set at Pinewood: a structure about 45 metres high built on the backlot, using hundreds of tonnes of structural steel and miles of tubular scaffolding, with a working monorail and enough clearance for a helicopter to fly inside. It cost around a million dollars, roughly what the entire production of Dr. No had cost five years earlier, and remains the reference point for what a Bond set can be. Because the 2011 eruption destroyed the lake and left a lava dome on the crater floor, the silhouette the film used no longer exists.

The landscape it belongs to. Kirishima is a young volcanic field sitting on the northern rim of the Aira caldera, the collapse structure that produced a catastrophic eruption around 30,000 years ago and whose southern edge now holds Kagoshima Bay and the still-smoking cone of Sakurajima, 40 kilometres away. The relationship is visible from any Kirishima summit on a clear day, and it explains the region's hot springs: rain sinking into fractured andesite meets heat at shallow depth and returns as sulphate and chloride water at Ebino, Myōken and Kirishima Onsen, some of it milky, some the colour of weak tea.

What you can actually walk. When alert levels permit, the classic approach starts from the Ebino Kōgen plateau at about 1,200 metres, where a nature centre, a campground and sulphurous hot springs sit among Japanese red pine. From there a loop passes Fudōike and Rokkannonmiike, two of several small crater lakes, and trails climb Karakunidake in roughly two hours for a view that on a clear winter morning reaches the cone of Sakurajima and, beyond it, the Kirishima caldera rim. Takachiho-no-mine, on the southeastern side above Takachihogawara, is climbed in about ninety minutes over red scoria; a bronze spear called Ame-no-Sakahoko is planted at its summit, tied to the myth of Ninigi-no-Mikoto descending to earth. Kirishima-jingū, the shrine at the mountain's foot, was rebuilt in 1715 and is the ceremonial anchor of the whole range.

Practicalities and timing. The nearest large towns are Kirishima and Kobayashi, and the usual bases are the hot-spring villages of Kirishima Onsen and Ebino Kōgen; Kagoshima Airport is about 40 minutes away by car, which makes this one of the easier Japanese volcanic areas to reach. Buses to Ebino Kōgen run on a thin timetable and stop entirely when alert levels rise, so a rental car is the practical option. April to June and October to November give stable weather and, in autumn, brilliant colour on the lower slopes; winter brings rime ice to the summits and occasional snow closures on the Ebino skyline road. Anyone planning to hike should check the current alert level and the designated exclusion zone before setting out, carry a helmet if venturing near active vents, and treat the mountain's published trail map as provisional — routes here are redrawn after every eruption.