Japan’s most active volcano erupted on Saturday afternoon, sending an ash plume 3.4km into the sky, grounding flights and blanketing the surrounding city of Kagoshima in debris.
It was Sakurajima’s first major eruption of the year and the second in four months.
The eruption from the volcano's Minamidake crater started just past noon local time, with the debris landing up to a kilometre away.
The Japan Meteorological Agency raised the volcanic alert to level 3 on its five-level scale, warning people not to approach the volcano due to dangers posed by falling rocks and pyroclastic flows.
Flights at the Kagoshima airport were grounded or delayed and road closures were reported across the city and surrounding areas like Tarumizu and Kanoya, where ash accumulation made driving hazardous.
The agency said the eruption helped ease most of the crustal deformation – a build-up of pressure inside the volcano caused by accumulating magma – which had been developing inside Sakurajima.
This was the first explosive eruption of the volcano since 13 December last year, according to Yomiuri Shimbun.
Sakurajima, which sits some 8km from the centre of Kagoshima, one of the largest cities in the Kyushu region, has deposited ash on the city regularly since the 8th century. The volcano used to be an island before a major eruption in 1914 produced lava flows that connected it to the mainland. That eruption killed 58 people and caused ash to fall as far north as Honshu.
Sakurajima has been in a state of near-continuous activity since 1955. A November 2025 eruption sent an ash plume 4.4km high and ejected rocks nearly 1.2km from the crater. In May 2025, multiple smaller eruptions disrupted local air travel.
In August 2013, the volcano produced its highest recorded ash plume since 2006, rising 5km and casting parts of Kagoshima city into darkness.
In 2015, the meteorological agency issued a level 4 alert, warning that a major eruption could be imminent.
Scientists from Bristol University and the Sakurajima Volcano Research Centre said in 2016 that the volcano could produce a major eruption within 30 years. Several large eruptions have occurred since then.
Sakurajima lies within the Aira Caldera, a 25km-wide depression in Kagoshima Bay formed around 28,000 years ago when an enormous eruption ejected several hundred cubic kilometres of ash and pumice, causing the magma chamber beneath to collapse.
The volcano is located on Japan's seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of volcanoes and fault lines that encircles much of the Pacific Ocean and accounts for the majority of the world's volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
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