AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Nigawa Yurinocho District Landslide Museum stands at the very site where a massive landslide killed 34 people during the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of January 17, 1995. Opened in 1997 and renovated in 2015, this free prefectural facility preserves the memory of that disaster while educating visitors about the mechanics of slope failures and how communities can prepare for them.↗
Tucked into a quiet riverside stretch upstream from Hankyu Nigawa Station, the museum is surrounded by a volunteer-tended garden of seasonal flowers and firefly-friendly waterways, making a visit part science lesson and part peaceful walk through one of Nishinomiya's greenest corners.↗↗
A Landslide Remembered
On the morning of January 17, 1995, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake set a slope above the Nigawa River in motion. The slide was roughly 100 metres wide and 100 metres long, with displaced earth reaching 15 metres deep—about 100,000 cubic metres of soil shifting in seconds. Thirteen homes in the Yurinoco district were destroyed and 34 lives were lost. Hyogo Prefecture opened the Landslide Museum here on November 18, 1997, two years after the disaster, and completely updated the exhibits on the earthquake's 20th anniversary in January 2015.
