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Yoshino Kumano NP, Wakayama
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Every July 14, 12 fan-shaped mikoshi—each about 6 m tall—descend to the falls, met by 12 blazing torches weighing up to 50 kg. The procession reenacts the deities’ annual return to their original waterfall home.
At Hiro Shrine, the waterfall itself is the sacred object, so there is no main shrine building to house a deity. Worshippers face the living cascade directly—a striking survival of nature worship at Nachi’s spiritual heart.
At 133 m, Nachi is Japan’s tallest uninterrupted single-drop waterfall, with about a ton of water falling each second. Four mountain streams converge above its 13 m lip, splitting into three ribbons—the “Three-Strand Falls.”
At the July festival, local performers present Nachi no Dengaku, a rice-harvest dance inscribed by UNESCO in 2012. Flute, waist drums and wooden binzasara clappers accompany formations inherited from medieval performance.
The Kamakura-period National Treasure Nachi Falls Scroll makes the cascade itself the deity. At its foot are a worship hall and a tall memorial marker, possibly recalling Emperor Kameyama’s visit in 1281.
The famous cascade is Ichi-no-Taki, the “First Waterfall” among the area’s “48 Nachi Falls.” Upstream falls were training grounds for Shugendo ascetics; the sacred forest containing them is usually closed to visitors.
Beside the falls, the Nachi Primeval Forest has been protected as shrine land for centuries without logging. Its 33.5 hectares of mixed temperate and warm-temperate evergreen forest became a National Natural Monument in 1928.
About 2,100 objects came from the sutra mound in front of Nachi Falls, including Hakuho- and Nara-period Buddhist statues and a rare esoteric-Buddhist altar set. They are now held by Tokyo National Museum, the shrine and Seiganto-ji.
While collecting lichens below Ichi-no-Taki, naturalist Minakata Kumagusu met Koaze Shiro, a young shipping-company employee who became a lifelong helper in his research. A field day at the falls began a remarkable scientific partnership.
At the falls’ dragon-mouth spout, visitors can drink basin water said to bring long life. Local legend links the belief to retired Emperor Kazan, who supposedly sank a nine-holed abalone in the pool to give its water life-extending power.
A 500-year-old Nachi pilgrimage mandala portrays monk Mongaku enduring a 21-day ascetic ordeal beneath the falls. The scene recalls the mountain training that drew Shugendo practitioners—and even nobles—to Nachi.
