Shiraito Falls

At Shiraito Falls the water does not come over the top of a river cliff. It seeps out of the rock face itself, in countless fine streams spread across a curved wall about 200 metres wide and 20 metres high, near the western foot of Mount Fuji. The name means "white threads", after the way the strands hang like silk. The water is Fuji's own snowmelt and rain, which soaks into the mountain and travels underground. Here a lava flow, named after the falls, rests on mudflow deposits left by the older volcano known as Old Fuji, and the groundwater escapes through the gaps between the layers of lava, about 1.5 tonnes of water every second.

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. Local tradition holds that the warlord Minamoto no Yoritomo stopped here during his great hunt at the foot of Fuji, tidied his hair with water from a spring in a grotto above the falls, and composed a poem about the white threads. The painter Ike no Taiga showed the falls together with Mount Fuji, and later artists followed his lead.

Shiraito Falls was designated a national Place of Scenic Beauty and Natural Monument in 1936, and is listed among Japan's Top 100 Waterfalls. In 2013 it was inscribed as one of the component sites of the World Heritage property "Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration". The 25-metre Otodome Falls lies about a five-minute walk away and is protected as part of the same site. Both lie within Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, in the city of Fujinomiya.

Getting there

The falls lie about 11 km north of central Fujinomiya. Buses run to the falls from Fujinomiya Station on the JR Minobu Line, and from Shin-Fuji Station on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen. The nearest airport is Mount Fuji Shizuoka Airport (FSZ), about 68 km away.