Ebisu Circuit: the track beside a safari park where D1 was born

At 23:08 on 13 February 2021, tremors of upper 6 on the Japanese shindo scale struck Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures. The next morning it turned out that at the Ebisu Circuit complex near Nihonmatsu a cliff at the edge of the Drift Land drift area had collapsed: the earth had moved across the west course and stopped only at the spin-practice area known as Kurukuru Land. The quake came at night, so nobody was injured, and the animals of the neighbouring safari park were not harmed either. For a venue where the first professional drifting series had started in 2000, it was the second such shock in ten years.

Location	Sawamatsukura 1, Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan
Type	a complex of ten layouts: road circuits, drift courses and areas, a gravel loop, a gymkhana area
East course (Higashi)	2061 m, clockwise, 10–20 m wide, 20 pit boxes, national licence from the JAF (Japan Automobile Federation)
Elevation difference	67 m on the east course; climb from the last corner to the start straight up to 14%
West course (Nishi)	2103 m
Opening	second half of the 1980s (exact year disputed)
Operator	Ebisu Circuit Co., Ltd. (株式会社エビスサーキット), president Nobushige Kumakubo, who also runs the neighbouring Tohoku Safari Park
Events	D1 Grand Prix (since 2000), Formula Drift Japan, Drift Matsuri drift festivals, Ebisu Super Endurance long-distance races
Status	open; closed on Wednesdays

The circuit behind the safari gate

Ebisu is about 15 minutes from the Nihonmatsu exit of the Tōhoku Expressway, and the operator advises entering Tohoku Safari Park, not the circuit, into the satnav, because both facilities stand on the same site. On its page about grip driving the circuit asks drivers to pass through the park slowly and to watch out for its visitors. The management is shared as well: Nobushige Kumakubo signs as president of the company that runs the circuit and holds the same post in the company that runs the park. The complex lies roughly halfway between Nihonmatsu and Mount Adatara, and JAF lists the scenic Azuma Skyline road and the spa town of Dake Onsen in the vicinity.

The exact date of the circuit’s birth cannot be given without reservations: all that is known is that it fell in the second half of the 1980s, and the operator gives no date on its website. In its English-language brochure the circuit calls the east course the oldest course of the complex, with an elevation difference of 67 m.

Only this course is licensed by JAF as a permanent national circuit. The federation gives a length of 2061 m, a clockwise direction, a width of 10 to 20 m and 20 pit boxes, and in its description draws attention to the climb from the last corner to the start straight, with a gradient of up to 14%. There are few grandstands here; JAF recommends to spectators the embankment at the first corner, from which more than half of the track can be seen. Besides the east course, the complex has nine courses and areas, among them the west course, 2103 m long, the north course Kita (1155 m), which lies highest, the 1200 m Touge course, which recreates a mountain pass, a school course of 420 m, two areas for learning to spin, one of which can be watered, and an area for motorcyclists practising knee-down riding on asphalt. The east and west courses are lit for night driving.

A jump in front of a concrete wall

Manabu Suzuki, a commentator and judge of the D1 Grand Prix, recounted in 2020 that in the 1990s drifting in Japan was a contest and not a sport: competitions were organised by various media, among them as part of the Video Option project, and by amateur groups, and he commentated on them together with Keiichi Tsuchiya. According to Suzuki it was Tsuchiya who wanted drifting to be something one could make a living from, and that is why in 2000 a professional drifting championship started at Ebisu Circuit, out of which the D1 Grand Prix grew. The arena was the south course, Minami; from the first season the series returned to it every year, and it was the only course with such continuity.

Minami’s fame was decided by its last corner. The author of the clicccar site, who walked the course on foot before the 2019 round, described it as a right-left sequence of the chicane type, beyond which the road suddenly drops away; the driver sets the car sideways before seeing the apex, and on the inside line the wheels leave the asphalt, sometimes all four at once. Right after that the car shoots onto a straight running right beside a concrete wall, scored with marks of earlier contacts. Weekly ASCII recalled that there is no safety run-off there, so every round at Ebisu turned into a survival race. Clicccar also cites how it all began: in 2004 the then little-known Hibino jumped at this spot in a Toyota AE86 on every pass and finished second, although according to the author the circuit, for safety reasons, would prefer the drivers not to jump.

First of all, get the circuit ready to drive again as quickly as possible and bring many people here from the Kantō area. And for ourselves too, to be able to drive again as soon as possible, and drive with everything we have. As a region that has itself suffered, we consider it our mission to bring cheer.

Nobushige Kumakubo wrote these words on his blog in the days after the earthquake of 11 March 2011, when he was director of the circuit and head of the Team Orange team. The ground cracked at Ebisu then and a garage collapsed, crushing the team’s Subaru Impreza; the safari park considered offering lodging to people who had lost their homes on the coast. Kumakubo was also an active competitor at the time. He won the D1 championship in 2006, with a one-point margin over Nomura, after a final run in the rain at Irwindale, and a second title in 2012. According to WEB CARTOP, from 2002 he showed drifting synchronised with music at American motor shows, later in Europe too, and performed a stunt scene in the film “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”. The Fukushima Prefecture tourism association links the circuit’s international fame with the fact that Kumakubo’s foreign students and fans began coming to Ebisu.

Camping on the track and bicycles on the asphalt

In August 2015 the D1 organisers and the circuit announced an overnight stay on the west course for spectators of the round on Minami: the inside of its first corners was to become, for one night, a campsite for those arriving by car. More than two months before the round, on 24 May, a four-hour team race on ordinary city bicycles, called mamachari in Japan, took place here on a course 2300 m long; the Nihonmatsu municipal bulletin noted that the participants grilled by the pits. For 23 September 2018 the city announced at Ebisu the Fukushima Moto Fes, a motorcycle event in aid of the region’s reconstruction, with former world champions Tetsuya Harada and Kenny Roberts among the guests.

Kumakubo himself, after years in D1, began in 2016 to compete in the all-Japan dirt trial championship, that is, timed runs on a gravel surface. In the round of the Tōhoku regional championship held on 15 May on the west course he beat D1 driver Naoto Suenaga in his class by about two and a half seconds, and an additional class for rear-wheel-drive cars was created for the drifters. In 2023 Suenaga also drove, alongside Kumakubo and Kanta Yanaguida, the “drift taxi”, which carries passengers sideways around successive courses of the complex.

The slope that slid onto the west course

The 2021 damage was described in detail by Auto Messe Web. The cliff at the edge of Drift Land collapsed, and the earth passed across the west course lying below it as far as Kurukuru Land; the east course and the school course cracked, and Drift Stadium, the D1 Grand Prix stage, and the north course also suffered. On the west course the control tower narrowly escaped damage, but the guest lounge, the pit boxes on the side of the last corner, the medical point and the restaurant were destroyed, and the timing system, replaced the same winter, was half lost; according to the site, these losses alone easily exceeded 10 million yen. For the first month the facility and its surroundings were secured against further damage. The north course, the school course and the other drift courses returned to use on 13 March, the east course on 1 April.

From 1 March 2021 the circuit accepted donations through its website, promising to put the donors’ names on an “EBISU SUPPORTERS” board. The operator later said that it had collected 89,384,187 yen. In a statement from March 2022 it wrote that soil had been removed from the west course but that reinforcement of the slope was continuing, so the circuit was running on half of the course, and it planned to open the full course around July.

Farewell to Minami

At the end of the 2021 season the D1 Grand Prix came to Minami for the last time. The tickets, limited by the pandemic to half the seats, sold out, a banner reading “Thank you, Ebisu Minami” and signed by the drivers hung at the last corner and was handed to Kumakubo after the event, and fans wrote farewells in chalk on the asphalt. Round 5 was won by Naoto Suenaga, for the first time in eight years. Suenaga, who besides racing worked in the circuit’s promotion department, explained to Weekly ASCII why the course is disappearing: the number of people doing drifting is shrinking, because used Japanese cars of the Silvia type are leaving for abroad, while the new Fairlady Z or 86 have naturally aspirated engines and too little power for drifting. Minami, in turn, is a course for very advanced drivers, and a circuit that lives on driving days for everyone cannot maintain it only for them. The idea for a successor was to mill off the asphalt and check whether weaker cars could slide on it.

Today the course is called Slide Park and measures 1203 m; the operator describes it as a gravel course whose surface is made of crushed former asphalt. In 2022 D1 moved to the part of the west course on which the series had debuted in 2020. Weekly ASCII photographed the slope then, where a trace of the landslide was still visible, and wrote that a profiled bend on which competitions would be held would be built at the site of the damage. In 2022 on the rebuilt part of this course the JAF Cup in gymkhana was held, that is, a gathering of the best competitors of the national and regional championships from all over Japan.

The D1 round at Ebisu usually fell in the summer holidays, but in 2024 it was moved to September to avoid the heat. In 2026 it was held on 26 and 27 September on the west course; on the first day it rained throughout, and on the second Masashi Yokoi beat Kume in the final and won for the fourth time in a row. In the same season the operator scheduled on its courses three Formula Drift Japan events, a round of the all-Japan dirt trial championship on the new Slide Park and two Ebisu Super Endurance races on the east course, a six-hour one on 4 July and a twelve-hour one on 17 October.

In your own car on a Monday

In 2018 WEB CARTOP estimated that more than 2000 foreigners a year come to Ebisu for drifting, and that 200–300 of them arrive for each Drift Matsuri festival; some buy a car on the spot and practise for a week or a month. The festival takes place three times a year, in spring, summer and autumn, and for two days opens all the courses to drivers. The prefecture’s tourist guide says that in spring 2025 a driver paid 20,000 yen for entry when buying online in advance and 25,000 yen at the gate, and that the north course was open on Saturday until midnight. On the Friday evening before the festival the G1GP competition takes place, intended solely for foreigners.

Outside the festival, drifters buy day tickets for a set of courses. According to the price list available in October 2026, the set with the north course, the school course, Touge, the areas and Slide Park costs 8500 yen per day and 5000 yen per half day, with insurance included; in winter, from December to March, it is cheaper. Drivers who drive grip, that is, without sliding, have Monday Challenge: every working Monday from 9:00 to 16:00, without a reservation and without the circuit licence, for between ten and twenty thousand yen a day plus 500 yen of insurance. In October 2026 it fell on the east course on 19 and 26 October, and on the west course on 5 and 19 October; for more than half the days of that month the east course was reserved exclusively by organisers of closed driving days, among them a Porsche club from Utsunomiya and Mito.

The requirements are simple: being 18 and holding a driving licence, a helmet, long sleeves and trouser legs, gloves, shoes with a closed heel, at least three-point seat belts, hubcaps and floor mats removed, glass lamp covers taped over, and in a convertible a roll bar. Passengers are not allowed, and when two people drive in one car, each pays separately. For sports driving on the east course the ESC circuit licence is needed: a three-hour lecture is held roughly once a month, and it costs 8000 yen registration, 18,000 yen annual fee for cars and 5000 yen administrative fee, while the regulations require the candidate to understand Japanese.

In the instructions that the circuit publishes for drifters driving on the west course, it says in English: “Driving today is limited to the drift bank course. Follow the arrows in the photo.” According to the announcement from 2022, the profiled bend was to be built exactly where, on the February night of 2021, the slope slid down.

Timeline

• 2000: the professional drifting championship started on the Minami course, the beginning of the D1 Grand Prix.
• 2004: Hibino jumps in a Toyota AE86 at the last corner of Minami and finishes second.
• 2006: Nobushige Kumakubo is D1 Grand Prix champion.
• 2011: after the earthquake of 11 March the ground cracks and a garage collapses.
• 2012: second D1 title for Kumakubo.
• 2015: announcement of an overnight stay for spectators of the D1 round on the west course.
• 2018: the city announces the Fukushima Moto Fes with Tetsuya Harada and Kenny Roberts.
• 2020: first D1 round on the west course.
• 2021: on 13 February a landslide onto the west course; at the end of the season the last D1 round on Minami.
• 2022: D1 on the west course; JAF Cup in gymkhana.
• 2026: D1 round on 26–27 September on the west course.