Hakone Nanamagari features twelve consecutive hairpin bends set into a steep mountain pass. A newer bypass road was constructed to carry mainstream traffic, leaving the original route largely to weekend enthusiasts. The combination of tight hairpins, light traffic, and paved surface made it suited to drifting practice. Sometime in the mid-1990s the local authority installed anti-drift road surface material in an attempt to deter the scene, but the measure had little lasting effect.
From the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, Hakone Nanamagari was a packed weekend destination for the Kanagawa touge crowd. Typical cars included Nissan S13 Silvias, Mazda FC RX-7s, and Mitsubishi Lancers — machines suited to sideways driving on a tight mountain road. The whole route was effectively taken over by drift cars on weekend nights, and the road has been described as one of Japan's most crowded drifting spots during its peak. Hakone Nanamagari appeared in the Initial D fifth stage anime and in multiple Japanese arcade racing games, cementing its status as one of the definitive real-world touge locations.
Today drifting on public roads is prohibited across Japan, and enforcement on Kanagawa-region passes has intensified. The hashiriya scene that once made Hakone Nanamagari famous has been suppressed, and the road is now primarily used by ordinary traffic and day-trippers accessing the surrounding hiking areas.
The touge's real-world character made it a priority for the Assetto Corsa modding community. Modder skyflightmusic released the "90's Golden Drift Spot Project #2 — Hakone Nanamagari" track mod and has revised it substantially across three major versions.
The first release established the basic road geometry and character. The second version was a complete rebuild that added twenty functional pit boxes and full AI racing lines, and the layout's accuracy was vetted by active Hakone drifters familiar with the real road. The third and most recent rebuild extended the route by approximately one kilometre, introduced two layout variants — a modern configuration and a 1993 historical layout — and added detailed light configuration and ambient audio effects. The encryption scheme used in the third version requires Custom Shader Patch build 1.30 or above to run.
A companion Custom Shader Patch Traffic Planner layout, released separately by maximumstar02 in September 2023, adds a realistic traffic flow layer over the mod, allowing drivers to experience the road with background traffic rather than as an empty circuit.
Hakone Nanamagari is one of the official Touge Battle roads in Forza Horizon 6, situated in the Nangan region in the southwest corner of the game's Japan map. The race start point does not appear on the player's map until they physically drive to the top of the winding mountain section, located roughly northwest of the Irokawa space centre.
The event is a B-class race capped at 600 power rating and is distinctive for its density of hairpin turns relative to almost any other road on the map. It features in the Gazoo Racer weekly challenge during the "Welcome to Japan" festival series, which requires winning the event in a 2022 Toyota GR86 — a demanding task given that the AI opponent drives a car purpose-built for touge racing. Completing the race awards 25,000 credits and contributes five points toward the Festival Playlist.
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