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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Shizuoka
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Local folklore gives Joren a spider spirit: when silk snags a farmer’s legs, he loops it around a stump, which is dragged into the plunge pool. A warning voice demands secrecy; the farmer later becomes village headman.
In 1744, shiitake instructor Itagaki Kanchirō returned from Utogi with wasabi seedlings and began cultivating them in Amagi’s Yugashima. A monument near Joren Falls honors the man credited with bringing wasabi to Izu.
Joren Falls tumbles from the edge of a lava flow laid down about 17,000 years ago. The same eruption built a plateau that now supports nearby homes and farms; cooling lava also formed the striking column-like cracks beside the falls.
The cliff fern called haikomochi-shida was first recorded in Japan at Joren Falls in 1917. Its fronds can exceed 1.5 m, and buds near their tips root into new plants—one reason its name means “baby-holding fern.”
The song “Amagi-goe,” which features Joren Falls, was created at the nearby Shirakabe inn. A stone monument to the song stands by the waterfall, linking this forested spot with a beloved Japanese classic.
The wasabi terraces beside Joren use tatamiishi: layers of large stones, smaller stones and sand filter springwater through the roots, keeping it fresh and oxygen-rich. This ingenious traditional farming system is recognized as World Agricultural Heritage.
In local tradition, a landslide destroyed Jorenji temple across the stream, and its enshrined Benten goddess walked into the waterfall’s pool. The story says the slope became stable after her arrival.
A late-Edo gazetteer called Joren Falls “Sankai-baku,” or “Three-Tier Falls,” and praised it as possibly the finest in the province. It also recorded “Joren-baku” as another name, linked to a temple that once stood nearby.
