Handa Plateau, Tableland in Kokonoe, Japan.

Handa Plateau is a tableland across the northern foot of the Kuju volcanic group in southern Kokonoe, Oita Prefecture, sloping gently between 750 and 1,200 metres. It forms the headwater area of the Kusu River and lies within Aso Kuju National Park. Its main part occupies the Iida district, after which it is named.

In the Edo period the plateau was common grazing land; under the Meiji land-disposal law it was sold off, and in 1891 local investors set up the Oita Ranch, dissolved in 1903. In 1889 Aoki Ushinosuke led farmers who had lost homes and fields to the Chikugo River floods in opening the Senchō Muda reclamation in the eastern plateau. The Yamanami Highway opened in October 1964.

Every year the plateau is burned in a regular noyaki controlled grass fire, a practice recognised in 2017 with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's Tezukuri Kyodo Award for the landscape it creates. The name Handa also lived on in a train: the limited express Handa ran on the Hita-Hikosan Line from 1963 until autumn 1986.

You can drive to the plateau in roughly 45 minutes from Yufuin, 60 minutes from Beppu, or 50 minutes from Aso. The mountain roads have curves and elevation changes, so allow extra time if you are not familiar with driving at altitude.

The plateau's grasslands are burned off every year in a regular noyaki, a practice recognised in 2017 with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's Tezukuri Kyodo Award for the landscape it creates. A train named Handa once ran to the plateau: introduced in 1963 as a temporary semi-express on the Hita-Hikosan Line, it became a regular service the next year and was discontinued in autumn 1986.