The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Japan
20 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful water wonders in Japan are Lake Kawaguchi, Kabira Bay and Kegon Falls. The list covers 20 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Japan is a chain of volcanic islands stretched from subarctic Hokkaido to the subtropical Ryukyus, and its waters reflect both the volcanoes and the long tradition of looking at them. Calderas fill with deep, clear lakes; steep, rain-soaked mountains send rivers over cliffs; geothermal heat feeds countless hot springs; and the southern islands are fringed with coral. For centuries poets, painters and pilgrims have framed these places, so many of them are as much cultural landmarks as natural ones.
Mount Fuji anchors several of them. Lake Kawaguchi, one of the Fuji Five Lakes, mirrors the mountain on calm mornings, Shiraito Falls spreads in hundreds of fine threads of spring water seeping from layers of lava, and Miho no Matsubara frames the peak behind a pine-lined beach. Kegon Falls at Nikkō carries the outflow of Lake Chūzenji over a cliff, Nachi Falls is a sacred single drop at the heart of the Kumano pilgrimage, and Shōmyō Falls in Toyama is the tallest waterfall in Japan.
In Hokkaido, Lake Mashū fills a caldera and is often hidden in fog, and the Shiretoko Five Lakes lie in a peninsula of wild forest. Matsushima's pine-clad islets have been counted among the Three Views of Japan for centuries. Far out in the Izu Islands, Aogashima is an inhabited volcano with a second cone inside its crater, Kabira Bay on Ishigaki shines with shifting blues, and at Jigokudani, wild macaques soak in hot springs through the winter.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Kawaguchi | Lake | ✓ |
| 2 | Kabira Bay | Lagoon | |
| 3 | Kegon Falls | Waterfall | |
| 4 | Matsushima | Island | |
| 5 | Lake Mashū | Volcanic crater lake | |
| 6 | Aogashima | Island | |
| 7 | Shiraito Falls | Waterfall | |
| 8 | Shōmyō Falls | Waterfall | |
| 9 | Jigokudani Monkey Park | Hot spring | |
| 10 | Nachi Falls | Waterfall | ✓ |
| 11 | Shiretoko Goko | Lake | |
| 12 | Miho no Matsubara | Beach | |
| 13 | Okama Crater Lake (Zaō) | Volcanic crater lake | |
| 14 | Blue Pond | Lake | |
| 15 | Hells of Beppu | Hot spring | |
| 16 | Ginzan Onsen | Hot spring | |
| 17 | Fukiware Falls | Waterfall | |
| 18 | Goshiki-numa | Lake | |
| 19 | Hashigui-iwa | Stack | |
| 20 | Kagami-numa (Hachimantai Dragon Eye) | Volcanic crater lake |
01 Lake Kawaguchi
Japan · 21.7 km from Kōfu35.515° N 138.757° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by IT-STUDIO from Pixabay The lake has no natural outlet. For centuries that meant floods in the lakeside villages whenever the water rose, until a canal linking it to a tributary of the Sagami River was completed in 1914.
Did you know? A small wooded island, Unoshima, rises from the middle of the lake.
02 Kabira Bay
Japan24.451° N 124.144° E
Tokyo-Good · CC BY-SA 4.0 Since 1997 the bay, together with Mount Omoto, the island's highest peak at about 525 metres, has been protected as a national Place of Scenic Beauty. When Iriomote National Park was enlarged in 2007 to become Iriomote-Ishigaki National Park, the bay was placed in its Class I special zone. The corals are usually viewed from glass-bottomed boats that cross the bay, and black pearls are cultured in its sheltered waters.
Did you know? Of nine pearl farms started in post-war Okinawa, the Kabira Bay venture was the only one still operating by 1963.
03 Kegon Falls
Japan · 39 km from Utsunomiya36.738° N 139.502° E
Orbixx · CC BY-SA 3.0 The landscape here was shaped by fire. Around 20,000 years ago an eruption of Mount Nantai dammed the valley and created Lake Chūzenji; the short Ōjiri River now spills from the lake and plunges over the edge of the old lava flows. The rock is young and brittle: water leaking through cracks in it feeds the so-called Twelve Falls, a fringe of small cascades that emerge midway down the cliff and never run dry.
Did you know? According to one theory, the falls once stood about 800 metres further downstream and have cut their gorge by slowly retreating up the valley.
04 Matsushima
Japan · 20.5 km from Sendai38.356° N 141.076° E
Chensiyuan · CC BY-SA 4.0 The bay's fame owes much to poets. Matsuo Bashō came here in 1689 on the journey he recorded in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The best-known verse about the place, which simply repeats the name in wonder, is popularly credited to him, but it first appeared in an 1820 guidebook and is attributed to the kyōka poet Tawara-bō; the only haiku on Matsushima from that journey was written by Bashō's companion, Kawai Sora.
Did you know? One theory holds that Date Masamune rebuilt Zuigan-ji as a hidden fortress, with a special room prepared to receive the Emperor.
05 Lake Mashū
Japan43.583° N 144.517° E
Miya.m · CC BY-SA 3.0 The basin is young in geological terms. The present caldera was blown out by a large eruption about 7,000 years ago and the volcano stayed active until a last explosive eruption around 2,000 years ago; the peak of Mashū-dake still rises from the rim. 6 metres was measured, more than the figure then recorded for Lake Baikal. Clarity has since settled at around twenty to thirty metres, still enough to give the water its deep, almost inky blue.
Did you know? An alternative Japanese name, Mashin-ko, is written with characters meaning demon god, and one theory traces the name to the Ainu Mas-un-to.
06 Aogashima
Japan32.458° N 139.759° E
Soica2001 ( talk ) · Public domain The beauty has a hard history behind it. Between 1781 and 1785 Aogashima erupted repeatedly; in 1783 lava forced every household off the island, and the great eruption of 1785 killed somewhere between 130 and 140 of the 327 islanders. The volcano has been quiet since the eighteenth century, but it is still classed as active, and its warmth is everywhere: steam vents, known locally as hingya, breathe out of the crater floor.
Did you know? The island distils its own shochu, aochu, fermented with wild koji so that each distiller's spirit tastes different from the next.
07 Shiraito Falls
Japan · 37.5 km from Kōfu35.313° N 138.589° E
InvictusOU812 from USA · CC BY 2.0 The falls have been admired for centuries. The chronicle of Oda Nobunaga's life, the Shinchō Kōki, already mentions "the famous Shiraito falls" in the western hills. In the Edo period they became a pilgrimage stop for members of the Fuji-kō, the confraternities that worshipped the mountain; a memorial stone to the ascetic Jikigyō Miroku, raised in the Tenpō era, still stands near the pool.
Did you know? The spring in the grotto above the falls, linked to Yoritomo's legend, is called Obin-mizu and was itself a sacred stop for Fuji pilgrims.
08 Shōmyō Falls
Japan · 29.7 km from Toyama36.575° N 137.523° E
kahusi ( 會話 ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 The volume depends on the mountains above. Precipitation in this part of the Tateyama range exceeds 6,000 millimetres a year, much of it falling as snow, so the falls run fullest in early and mid summer, when the snowfields on the plateau melt. In that season a second waterfall, Hannoki Falls, appears beside it on the same cliff, and the two pour down almost side by side.
Did you know? In periods of very heavy flow, a third waterfall known as Sōmen Falls can briefly appear on the same cliff alongside Shōmyō and Hannoki.
09 Jigokudani Monkey Park
Japan · 27.7 km from Nagano36.733° N 138.463° E
Image by 3503898 from Pixabay The habit has a known beginning. In the early 1960s macaques were seen copying the guests of the Korakukan, an old inn in the valley, and climbing into its outdoor bath. Local people, keen to draw the troop away from farms where it was being hunted for raiding crops, had already been luring the monkeys towards the inn.
Did you know? The troop's top-ranking male is traditionally given the honorary title Ryūō, "Dragon King", and the park counts its leaders in numbered generations.
10 Nachi Falls
Japan33.672° N 135.891° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by pen_ash from Pixabay What makes the site unusual even by Japan's standards is what stands right beside the shrine: Seiganto-ji, a Buddhist temple, sharing the same hillside and for most of their shared history run as effectively one institution rather than two competing faiths.
Did you know? The surrounding forest hides 48 named waterfalls once used for ascetic training; lost after the Meiji religious reforms, they were rediscovered in 1991.
11 Shiretoko Goko
Japan44.126° N 145.081° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 The lakes are known simply by number, from the First Lake at the southwest end to the Fifth. 1. Only the Second and Third have streams flowing in or out: the Second drains into the Third, and a small brook carries the Third Lake's water down to the Sea of Okhotsk. The forest around them is dominated by Yezo spruce and Sakhalin fir.
Did you know? Bear sightings closed the ground trails so often that in 2007 they could open for only about 98 days of the season.
12 Miho no Matsubara
Japan · 12.6 km from Shizuoka34.995° N 138.523° E
Suicasmo · CC BY-SA 4.0 The grove covers the shore of the Miho peninsula, in the Shimizu ward of Shizuoka. Tens of thousands of pines grow along it. From the shore the view also takes in the Izu peninsula across the bay. The Japanese government designated the grove a Place of Scenic Beauty in 1922, and in 1916 it was chosen as one of the New Three Views of Japan.
Did you know? Since 1989 the shore has been protected from erosion by L-shaped groynes and offshore breakwaters that help keep sand on the beach.
13 Okama Crater Lake (Zaō)
Japan · 18.7 km from Yamagata38.136° N 140.449° E
Qwert1234 · Public domain Its colour is the reason people climb up to look at it. On a calm day in quiet volcanic periods, the water is an intense milky turquoise, often compared to jade or lapis. But it changes: with the angle of the sun, the weather and the season, it shifts through emerald, blue and grey, and when the volcano stirs the water can cloud to white or darker tones. That variability gave it its other name, Goshiki-numa, the five-coloured pond.
Did you know? Chemistry drives the colour changes: oxidising iron can tint the water reddish, and iron sulphide formed in the lake can make it look almost black.
14 Blue Pond
Japan · 34.6 km from Asahikawa43.494° N 142.614° E
MaedaAkihiko · CC BY-SA 4.0 In December 1988, Mount Tokachi erupted, and to protect the town of Biei from volcanic mudflows, several barriers were built across the Biei River. One of them, a dam of concrete blocks, was begun by the Hokkaido Regional Development Bureau in June 1989 and completed by the end of that year.
Did you know? In winter the pond and its standing dead trees are lit up at night for a limited season.
15 Hells of Beppu
Japan · 14.5 km from Ōita33.316° N 131.469° E
663highland · CC BY 2.5 Five of the hells lie close together in the Kannawa district. Umi Jigoku, the Sea Hell, is the largest and the most beautiful, a pool of startling cobalt blue at about 98 °C that is said to have formed some 1,200 years ago in an eruption of Mount Tsurumi; its heat is used to cook onsen eggs. Oniishibōzu Jigoku is a field of grey mud that heaves up into round bubbles, likened to the shaven heads of monks.
Did you know? Underground, the water feeding Tatsumaki Jigoku reaches about 150 °C, flashing to steam below boiling point as it surges up and loses pressure.
16 Ginzan Onsen
Japan · 38 km from Yamagata38.570° N 140.531° E
lumoplank · CC0 The village began as a silver-mining settlement. Tradition places the discovery of the hot springs by miners some five centuries ago, and the Nobesawa silver mine behind the village made it prosperous until production faded toward the end of the seventeenth century.
Did you know? Ginzan was designated a national health resort in 1968, and a townscape preservation ordinance followed in 1986 to protect its look.
17 Fukiware Falls
Japan · 36.4 km from Maebashi36.702° N 139.207° E
Σ64 · CC BY 3.0 The stone is welded tuff, laid down by a massive pyroclastic flow from a volcanic eruption some nine million years ago. Between the confluence of the Hikawa upstream and the Kurihara downstream, the Katashina has carved this rock into a gorge about a kilometre long, eroding the softer parts of the bed faster than the harder ones.
Did you know? The Katashina River that forms the falls belongs to the Tone River system, the drainage basin that waters much of the Kantō Plain.
18 Goshiki-numa
Japan · 37.7 km from Kōriyama37.652° N 140.080° E
Jordy Meow · CC BY 3.0 The lakes are the offspring of a catastrophe. On 15 July 1888 Mount Bandai erupted and the northern peak, Ko-Bandai, collapsed; a vast avalanche of rock and debris buried villages and killed nearly five hundred people. The debris dammed the local rivers and created hundreds of lakes and ponds, among them the large lakes Hibara, Onogawa and Akimoto and, between them, the scattered ponds of Goshiki-numa.
Did you know? Aka-numa, the "Red Pond", is actually greenish; its name comes from iron-rich water that stains the roots of the reeds along its shore red.
19 Hashigui-iwa
Japan33.484° N 135.797° E
663highland · CC BY-SA 4.0 The explanation lies 15 million years back. Volcanic activity forced molten rhyolite up into layers of soft mudstone, where it set in a long, narrow wall. The sea and weather have since worn away the softer mudstone much faster than the hard igneous rock, leaving the pillars standing on a wave-cut platform.
Did you know? Close to the rocks is Kōbō-yu, a sulphur spring that local tradition says Kūkai himself pointed out to the villagers; a bathhouse opened there in 1978.
20 Kagami-numa (Hachimantai Dragon Eye)
Japan · 35.1 km from Morioka39.954° N 140.854° E
SAGI1955 · CC0 Kagami-numa, whose name means "mirror pond", sits just below the 1,613-metre summit of Hachimantai, on the border between Iwate and Akita prefectures in the Towada-Hachimantai National Park. It is a crater lake: Hachimantai belongs to the Nasu volcanic belt and was shaped by repeated large eruptions during the Quaternary period, and when activity ended, water gathered in the hollow of a vent.
Did you know? Kagami-numa has a twin crater pond nearby, Megane-numa, the spectacles pond, formed in the same way when water filled an old vent.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful water wonders in Japan?
- On our list, Lake Kawaguchi ranks first, followed by Kabira Bay and Kegon Falls.
- What is the tallest waterfall in Japan?
- Shōmyō Falls in Toyama Prefecture, fed by snowmelt from the Tateyama range, is the tallest waterfall in Japan at about 350 metres.
- What are the Three Views of Japan?
- The Three Views of Japan (Nihon Sankei) are Matsushima Bay in Miyagi, the sandbar of Amanohashidate in Kyoto Prefecture, and the island shrine of Itsukushima at Miyajima, a list going back to the 17th century.
- Why do monkeys bathe in hot springs at Jigokudani?
- Japanese macaques at Jigokudani in Nagano Prefecture live in a region of harsh, snowy winters and have learned to sit in the natural hot spring pools to keep warm.
- How many lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches are on this list in Japan?
- The list covers 20 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches.