Checked against the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s (MLIT) official chain-regulation page on 2 November 2026. Activation depends on the season’s snowfall, so check the road manager’s real-time traffic site before driving a designated section in winter.

Renting a car to loop around Mt. Fuji’s Fuji Five Lakes in winter is one of the more popular side trips for visitors to Japan, and studless snow tires — the standard winter tire fitted by almost every rental company from late autumn — are usually all you need. There’s one situation where that stops being true: a small number of mountain-pass roads nationwide, one of them running right past Mt. Fuji, can legally close to any vehicle that isn’t fitted with actual tire chains, snow tires or not. It doesn’t trigger on every snowy day, and it doesn’t apply everywhere, so knowing exactly when and where it applies is what keeps a planned drive from turning into a roadside turnaround.

It only activates during unusually heavy snowfall, not routine winter weather

Japan’s “chain regulation” (チェーン規制) is a specific legal designation, not a blanket winter rule. MLIT reserves it for conditions serious enough to trigger a heavy snow special warning or an emergency heavy-snow announcement — the kind of snowfall that has, in the past, stranded long lines of vehicles on steep mountain passes for hours. On an ordinary snowy day, studless tires are exactly what they’re meant for, and nothing extra is required. The regulation exists for the rarer, more severe event sitting above that.

13 sections nationwide are designated — one of them is the road around Mt. Fuji

MLIT’s designated list covers 13 sections in total: 6 on national highways (Routes 7, 8, 54, 56, 112, and 138) and 7 on expressways (sections of the Jōshin’etsu, Chūō, Hokuriku, Yonago, and Hamada routes). These are steep mountain passes with a documented history of large-scale vehicle stranding, chosen specifically because chained vehicles can still move through them even during conditions that would otherwise close the road entirely.

The one most relevant to visitors is Route 138 between Yamanakako Village in Yamanashi Prefecture and Oyama Town in Shizuoka Prefecture, an 8.2-kilometer stretch that runs along the Mt. Fuji Five Lakes route many rental-car visitors already plan to drive. The other national-highway section worth knowing if you’re heading into the Tōhoku mountains is Route 112 over the Gassan Pass, between Nishikawa Town and Tsuruoka City in Yamagata Prefecture.

Studless snow tires don’t satisfy the regulation — chains do, every time

This is the part that surprises people who’ve driven winter roads in Japan before without issue: once chain regulation is active on a section, a vehicle fitted only with studless snow tires cannot pass, full stop. MLIT states this directly — studless-tired vehicles can still become stranded in the exact heavy-snow conditions the regulation targets, which is the entire reason the rule exists. Actual tire chains have to be fitted before the vehicle is allowed through, and that applies even to four-wheel-drive vehicles; chains go on the driven wheels regardless of drivetrain.

If you’ve rented a car without chains and drive up to an active section, you’ll be checked and turned back before the regulated stretch, not partway through it. A rental counter in a region with designated sections will often offer chains as a small add-on at pickup — it’s worth asking for one specifically if your route in winter includes a mountain pass, rather than assuming the studless tires already on the car cover every scenario.

There’s no fixed season — check the road manager’s site before you drive, not after you’ve left

Because activation depends entirely on the forecast, not the calendar, there’s no fixed “chain season” to plan around. The road sections themselves are fixed; whether the regulation is actually in force on the day you drive one isn’t. MLIT and each regional road office post current regulation status on their winter-road traffic pages, and that’s the only way to know before you’re on the mountain — not a travel blog’s description of “last winter,” and not the tire type a rental counter assigned you by default.

How Travel AI Rescue helps

Travel AI Rescue keeps Japan’s police and ambulance numbers one tap away, with the country code already attached, so you’re not hunting for 110 or 119 if a mountain-pass drive turns into a stranded wait. It can display a Japanese-language card explaining your situation — “My car is stuck in snow,” for instance — so a patrol officer or road-service worker understands you immediately without a shared language. And it keeps your rental contract, licence, and passport details stored and readable on the device even with no signal, which matters most exactly where chain-regulation sections tend to sit: steep passes where a cellular connection isn’t guaranteed. (Whether a section is under chain regulation on a given day is decided by the road manager, not by Travel AI Rescue — check their site before you drive.)

Sources

• Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), “タイヤチェーン規制について” [“About the Tire Chain Regulation”]. https://www.mlit.go.jp/road/bosai/fuyumichi/tirechains.html (accessed 2 November 2026).
• MLIT press release on the designation of 13 chain-regulation sections, including Route 138 (Yamanakako, Yamanashi–Oyama, Shizuoka) and Route 112 (Nishikawa–Tsuruoka, Yamagata). https://www.cbr.mlit.go.jp/kisya/2018/12/1233.pdf (accessed 2 November 2026).