FIVE-MILE TUNNEL UNDER HILLS OPENS COASTAL RESORT IN JAPAN

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6811, 15 January 1929, Page 9

FIVE-MILE TUNNEL UNDER HILLS OPENS COASTAL RESORT IN JAPAN

ATAMI, Japan. It is nearly three years now since the railroad ’ built into Atami, this little coastal resort nestling in a corner of Sagami Bay and protected from the cold winds of winter by the mountains which circle it about, but the little steamers come and go just as before. The dire predictions that they would vanish with the coming of the railroad have all proved false. Foj centuries Atami has been an isolated spot. The many wars which raged throughout Japan during the long feudal period passed it by, leaving it happy and contented. The Toknido, the Eastern Sea Road of Japan which links Tokyo with Kyoto and along which so many acts in the Nation's drama have taken place, cuts inland before Atami is reached to cross the high range of the Hakone Mountain barrier.

With the day of the steamboat in Japan Atami was at least partly knit into the world of.which it had so long not been a part. 1 Later a tiny, narrow gauge railway was run along the lace of the cliffs from Odatvara, 18 miles distant. It clung perilously to them, and at places was supported by the frailest of bamboo scaffoldings. Sturdy coolies pushed the train uphill, to climb in and ride down the next slope. And then the engineers of Japan decreed that a great tunnel, more than live miles in length, should be cut through the Ilakono Mountains and so save an hour’s time in the trip between the Broad East-, and the Broad West. Atami was the site chosen at which to bore into the mountain range.

The tiny railway was discarded and modern engineering carved a good railway out of - the cliffs that lie between Odawara and Atami, at times tunneling -through them, at times cutting a niche aloug their faces, bridging chasms and achieving the difficult. Trains were run into Atami as a terminus until the greater tunnel should be completed and they might thus continue on to Kobe and Osaka. Atami rejoiced, for it now believed prosperity bad conic. And it has. Many handsome villas arc being erected, the mountains overlooking the town and the sea are being terraced for more homes. But the littlo steamers still ply between Atami and the ports along ’the Idzu peninsula, even as far as Shimoda. The peninsula is not yet served by a railway and only one motor road runs down its high backoonc. Another road is being built along the coast, and in time the railway will also be extended.