Nachi Falls

Interesting facts

A notch in the rock at the lip splits the water into three streams, which is why Nachi is also known as the 'Three-Stream Falls'.

Every 14 July the Nachi Fire Festival carries twelve six-metre fan-shaped portable shrines, one for each month, down to the falls amid torches weighing up to 50 kilograms.

Each of the festival's fan shrines is assembled with exactly 365 bamboo nails, one for every day of the year.

Nachi is traditionally ranked among Japan's three most famous waterfalls, together with Kegon Falls in Nikko and Fukuroda Falls in Ibaraki.

The surrounding forest hides 48 named waterfalls once used for ascetic training; lost after the Meiji religious reforms, they were rediscovered in 1991.

An excavation near the falls in 1918 uncovered a buried sutra mound with statues, bronze mirrors and sutra cylinders, offerings left by priests centuries ago.

A medieval hanging scroll depicting the falls as a deity, kept at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo, is designated a National Treasure of Japan.

The famous three-storied pagoda in front of the falls is a 1972 rebuilding; the original burned in 1581 during the Warring States period.

In past centuries some ascetics leapt from the top, believing they would be reborn in the paradise of the bodhisattva Kannon.

The falls drop 133 metres over near-vertical cliffs of quartz porphyry, a hard volcanic rock, and are about 13 metres wide at the top.

Why it is worth it

At 133 metres, Nachi is Japan's tallest single-drop waterfall, but height isn't really why people have been coming here for over a thousand years. The falls themselves are the object of worship — not a shrine built near a waterfall, but the waterfall treated as the god. Kumano Nachi Taisha, the shrine complex on the mountainside above, keeps the cascade itself as its sacred body, and by tradition the site's history reaches back to a legendary landing by the future Emperor Jimmu, who is said to have enshrined the falls' spirit after witnessing its force.

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. When Buddhism arrived in Japan in the sixth century it didn't displace the older reverence for Nachi's water — the two traditions merged instead, and the temple's three-storied pagoda, standing in front of the falls, is the classic image of that fusion.

The shrine is also a stop on the Kumano Kodo, the network of pilgrimage trails through the Kii mountains that UNESCO lists as a World Heritage site alongside the temples of Nara and Kyoto — one of the few pilgrimage routes anywhere to get that designation. Walking the last stretch of trail down to the falls, past centuries-old cedars, gives some sense of why this particular stretch of falling water earned that kind of staying power.

Good to know

The falls are officially protected as a Place of Scenic Beauty, and the classic photograph — pagoda in front, falls behind — is taken from a platform partway up the shrine's approach, not from the base.

Best time to visit

Rainy season in June swells the flow noticeably; November brings the best autumn colour against the shrine's red pagoda.

Getting there

11 km from Shingū. Nanki Shirahama Airport (SHM) is about 49 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

Nachi Falls in Nachikatsuura, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, is one of the best-known waterfalls in Japan. With a drop of 133 metres (436 ft) and 13 metres (43 ft) wide, it is the tallest waterfall with a single uninterrupted drop in Japan ; however, the tallest Japanese waterfalls with multiple drops are Hannoki Falls, at 497 m (1,631 ft) (seasonal), and Shōmyō Falls, at 350 m (1,150 ft).

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