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Beppu Rakutenchi Cable Line

cable railway in Beppu, Japan

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ4890933 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Beppu Rakutenchi Cable Line (別府ラクテンチケーブル線, Beppu Rakutenchi Kēburu-sen) is a Japanese funicular line in Beppu, Ōita. The line opened in 1929 as a gateway to Beppu Rakutenchi amusement park on Mount Tateishi. Although the line is legally considered as a public transit, not an attraction ride, riders have to pay the amusement park admission fee to take the funicular line. Local residents in Otobaru, the settlement on the mountain, are allowed to ride the line without the fee. The line is unique in the country as it is operated by Okamoto MFG (岡本製作所, Okamoto Seisakujo), an amusement ride maker.

Basic data

Distance: 0.3 km or 0.19 mi

System: Single track with two cars

Gauge: 1,067 mm or 3 ft 6 in

Stations: 2

Vertical interval: 122 m or 400 ft

Maximum gradient: 558 ‰ or 55.8 %

Business changes

In July 2008, Okamoto announced that it would close the park as of the end of August 2008 if it could not find a successor. One of the reasons of the setback was that it failed to invite a Chinese circus team with two pandas because of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In August, it was reported that Okamoto fortunately found a buyer for the park: Kyūshū Kankō Hōmu, a real estate company in Ōita. However, talks between the companies broke down in October 2008 and the park closed on November 30, 2008.

The park and funicular resumed business on July 18, 2009.

Editorial summary

“Beppu Rakutenchi Cable Line” enters the record as cable railway in Beppu, Japan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Beppu, Rakutenchi and Cable can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1929, 2008, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1929-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Beppu, Rakutenchi and Cable.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Beppu Rakutenchi Cable Line” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Beppu, Rakutenchi and Cable provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

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 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4890933. Authority coordinates are 33.275, 131.484. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 2008 and 2009.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Beppu Rakutenchi Cable Line” 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.