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Chubu-Sangaku NP, Gifu
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Local legend ties the falls to Hirayu Onsen’s discovery: exhausted troops under Takeda Shingen’s commander Yamagata Masakage followed an old white monkey from the waterfall to a nearby hot spring.
Ōtaki marks the eroded edge of Yotsudake lava from about 40,000 years ago; the flow once reached near Hirayu Ski Area. Nearby rocks are older still: seabed sediments roughly 200 million years old.
When winter freezes the cascade, the Ice Festival makes it a village night out: the falls glow after dark, while nearby festivities bring fireworks, local performances, bazaar stalls and warm amazake, a sweet rice drink.
Nearby Hirayu Shrine made the waterfall’s white-monkey legend part of local worship: it enshrined the monkey and took its present name in 1980. At May’s Yukabana Festival, hot-spring water is sprinkled in a prayer for good health.
At 64 meters tall and 6 meters wide, Hirayu Ōtaki is a slender plunge. It was selected for Japan’s Top 100 Waterfalls in 1990 and is also among Gifu’s 50 Notable Waters, a prefectural list established in 1986.
