Aonodōmon
tourist attraction in Ōita Prefecture, Japan
Aonodōmon (青の洞門, meaning "blue tunnel") is a tourist attraction located in the gorge of Yabakei, now part of Nakatsu City, in Ōita Prefecture, Japan.
Legend has it that before the tunnel was built, people had to climb over the cliffs through which the tunnel is built to reach an important local shrine. The path was very dangerous and people regularly fell to their deaths. During the Edo period, a Buddhist monk named Zenkai, who had committed a murder in his earlier life, decided to build a safe passage for worshipers in order to atone for his crime. Beginning at the age of 49, he dedicated 30 years of his life to digging the 185 metre tunnel by hand, using only a hammer and chisel. The tunnel was opened for use in 1763.
Aonodōmon was made famous by a popular book written by author Kikuchi Kan.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Aonodōmon” as tourist attraction in Ōita Prefecture, Japan. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4118917. Authority coordinates are 33.500, 131.172. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1763.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aonodōmon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.