Steady, law-abiding drivers on a 1.2-kilometer stretch of the Noto-Satoyama Kaido Expressway in Ishikawa Prefecture are treated to a song that comes from below.

The melody of “Marezora,” the opening song for “Mare,” a Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) drama series that aired in 2015, plays for a minute when the motorist follows the speed limit of 70 kph.

The music is generated through the friction between the vehicle’s tires and small grooves carved into the hard surface of the road.

Such sections are called musical roads, melody roads or melody lines.

They promote traffic safety by encouraging drivers not to speed and preventing them from nodding off while keeping the roads from getting icy.

Japan has several dozen musical road sections, many of which are installed on roads with a speed limit of 40 kph.

The one in Ishikawa Prefecture on the Noto Peninsula is the only musical road in the three-prefecture Hokuriku region.

Locally known as “Otonomichi” (path of sound), the section runs between the Besshodake service area straddling Nanao and Anamizu and the Koshinohara Interchange in Anamizu bound for Wajima.

The “Mare” drama was set in Wajima.

According to the prefectural government’s Nakanoto Civil Engineering General Office, which manages the section, the cost of installation was about 48 million yen ($320,000).

It was the longest musical road in Japan when it was completed in 2015, made to match the length of the song.

The section requires no particular maintenance, the office said.

It has also not been criticized by severe music critics or neighbors demanding peace and quiet.

INTO THE GROOVE

Shinoda Kougyo Co., a civil engineering firm based in Shibetsu, Hokkaido, set up the first musical road in 2004 when it created a section that plays “Shiretoko Ryojo” in Shibetsu.

According to the company, a vehicle acts like the needle of a record player, and the parallel cuts in the road are like grooves on a vinyl album.

Different musical scales, ranges and melodies can be made through adjustments to the spacing of the grooves.

After obtaining a patent for the technology and the trademark for “melody road,” Shinoda Kougyo installed many musical sections in and outside Japan.

“Initially, we would lie down on the ground to mark dots and etch grooves with a push-along cutter,” Takeshi Shinoda, 40, managing director of the company, recalled. “But now, it has been replaced by digital technology and a specialized machine to produce more complex melodies.”

It takes as little as a week to make a musical road and about a month to create an elaborate one, he added.

10 IN GUNMA PREFECTURE

Musical roads are installed at the discretion of local government road management authorities.

Notable ones include a section of the Biwa-Ohashi bridge in Shiga Prefecture, which plays “Biwako Shuko no Uta,” a stretch of a prefectural road in Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, where motorists can hear the theme song of the “Gegege no Kitaro” anime show, and an old segment of a national route in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, playing “Futami Jowa.”

But Gunma Prefecture has the most musical roads. Ten melody lines were installed there about 10 years ago as part of a tourism-promotion campaign.

In Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, a musical road was created in April this year along Daiichi Irohazaka, a national route famed for autumn foliage, ahead of the Group of Seven meeting of gender equality and women’s empowerment ministers in June.

The song played is Godiego’s “Monkey Magic,” which has been covered by artists around the world, in tribute to the three wise monkeys at Nikko Toshogu Shrine.

Irohazaka, a mountain road with many sharp curves and other difficult features, has been the site of speeding and skidding accidents in winter.

Prefectural officials came up with the musical road idea as a countermeasure.

“We weren’t motivated by (adjacent) Gunma Prefecture,” an official said.

NOISE COMPLAINTS

Meanwhile, Toyama and Fukui prefectures are planning no musical roads, In addition, some sections have been silenced.

The town office of Naganohara in Gunma Prefecture spent about 15 million yen to install a musical road that played “Ah, Lovely Meadows” in 2012.

But the municipality received noise complaints from nearby holiday homes and was forced to remove the singing section just over a year after it was completed.

The Venus Line in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, was installed in 2008. But several passers-by reported the road wasn’t producing good sounds for the song, “Scarborough Fair.”

The prefectural government decided to remove the section after 12 years because it would take too much effort to repair it.

“The road was falling into disrepair due to abrasion and cracks because it can be covered with snow,” an official said.

There have been no noise or other complaints about Otonomichi. And there have been no reported accidents there since it was installed.

Ishikawa Prefecture said it has no immediate plans to install a new musical road.

Otonomichi has several curves and slopes, making it difficult to drive at a constant speed. It requires skill to play the steady melody in the latter half of the song.