Winding Japan No.4: The Pass That Opens on September 18 - Amo Pass, Open on Only One Side

Last time I wrote about deadlines. The ETC Touring Plan for motorcycles runs until November 30, and until October 31 in Hokkaido. I spent that whole column counting dates that end. But when you spread out a map, there are dates that begin, too. For me this year, that date is September 18. Route 360 in Gifu Prefecture, over Amo Pass. According to Hida City's notice, the 12.2 kilometers from Ogimachi in Shirakawa Village up to the pass is scheduled to reopen that day. The 8.2 kilometers on the Hida City side already opened on July 3. In other words, right now this pass is open on one side only. On the map it reads as a single continuous line, but in reality it dead-ends partway. I run into roads in this state a few times a year, and every time I'm glad I found out before setting off rather than after.

Amo Pass sits at 1,289 meters, on the boundary between Hida City and Shirakawa Village in Ono District, carrying you from the Jinzu River basin over into the Sho River basin. From the Shirakawa-go side the climb is roughly 800 meters of elevation. Vehicles longer than eight meters cannot use it. Narrow width and an unbroken run of steep grades and tight curves have earned it a reputation as one of Japan's notorious "kokudo" - national routes in name only. Even in a normal year it closes from mid-November to the end of May, and Shirakawa Village's own guide gives the open season as early June to early November. The ground is weak, and landslides shut it down even in snow-free months. What kept it closed this long, though, was snow. Slope failures, damaged guardrails, and in June 2025 the announcement that there would be no reopening during fiscal 2025 because of restoration work. All 20.4 kilometers from Amo in Kawai-cho, Hida City to Ogimachi in Shirakawa Village were closed outright, to pedestrians and bicycles as well. The original plan had been to reopen in late May 2025; the scale of the damage forced the whole outlook to be rebuilt. For over a year, it was a national route nobody traveled. Mountain passes have spells like that, when they go on living only on the map.

A road that is open on only one side needs some thought. Climb from the Hida City side and you cannot continue over the pass into Shirakawa Village; count on it as a through route and you will be turning around at the barrier. I have two suggestions. The first, for anyone riding before September 17, is to treat the Hida City side as an out-and-back road and enjoy it as such. Once you know you cannot get through, riding the same road twice stops feeling like a waste, oddly enough. The sound of a stream you missed on the way up reaches you properly on the way back down. The second is to enter from the Shirakawa-go side once it reopens. Trails to the Amo wetland and Mt. Momonuka lead out from the parking area at the pass; the virgin beech forest and the high moor where skunk cabbage grows were designated a "Treasure of Gifu" in 2011. The Shirakawa Village side is the proper entrance to all of it. That said, September 18 is only a projection. Map apps will happily route you through as though the road were open, so before you leave, check Gifu Prefecture's road restriction information and the notices from Hida City and Shirakawa Village. That one check is worth the trouble. Faced with a half-open road, riders split into those who ride up to the barrier and turn around, and those who learn it doesn't go through and pick a different pass from the start. Either is fine by me. What matters is not going in blind and coming away disappointed, but deciding once you know. How satisfying a trip feels often turns on exactly that.

Suppose it does open on September 18. That leaves only about six weeks before the usual winter closure. The beech trees start to turn, and then the snow season arrives. Roads with short open seasons leave the thickest memories of a given year. Memories of roads you can visit any time dissolve little by little, while a road open only a few weeks a year stays with you down to the color of the sky on the day you rode it. Shigasaka Pass, which I wrote about in the first installment, was a road that exists because the land required it, and Amo Pass is no different: it was never drawn for tourism. A line where people crossed a mountain to link two valleys, Hida and Shirakawa-go, simply became a national route. So when I hear that repairs took more than a year, it doesn't strike me as strange. And the people doing the restoration work are not fixing it so that we can ride; they are fixing it to support the lives and the natural park that lie beyond it. I would rather not get that order backwards. With that said, waiting for word that it has opened, resting a finger on the map and wondering where to ride next - that is still my favorite way to spend an evening.