Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) volcano cams

The Japan Meteorological Agency is the national body responsible for weather, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes in Japan. It watches 111 active volcanoes and keeps round-the-clock surveillance on the 50 that pose the greatest risk, with seismometers, tiltmeters, GNSS receivers and cameras.

Its volcanic alert levels, from 1 to 5, decide when trails close, when an area around a crater is off limits and when people are asked to leave. The agency publishes a new still image from each surveillance camera every few minutes, free for anyone to look at, together with the images from the previous hours.

On this site those cameras cover Sakurajima, Mount Asama, Shinmoedake in the Kirishima range, Kusatsu-Shirane, Mount Unzen, Mount Tokachi and Suwanosejima. They are plain, honest views of the craters, often from several angles at once, and they keep working at night and in bad weather, when livestreams tend to show nothing.

Each image on this site is credited to the agency and links back to its own page.