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Aso-Kuju NP, Kumamoto
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About 60 tonnes of 14°C water surge from Shirakawa each minute—roughly 1,000 litres a second. It is one of the sources feeding the Shirakawa River, not the river’s only headwater.
Look closely at the pool floor: water rises through the sand strongly enough to lift and swirl the grains. The clear water makes this bubbling movement visible, as if the spring is stirring the bottom.
Beside the spring, Shirakawa Yoshimi Shrine enshrines Mizuhanome-no-Kami, a water deity, as well as Kunitatsu-no-Kami. Minamiaso Village says the local water-deity worship is probably older.
During the Genroku era (1688–1703), the Kumamoto lord visited Yoshimi Shrine on a hunting trip and ordered its main sanctuary repaired, honoring it as guardian of water for his domain’s rice fields.
A nearby washi workshop uses Shirakawa’s fresh spring water for handmade Japanese paper. Visitors can try making a sheet themselves, so the water becomes part of a living local craft as well as a famous spring.
Shirakawa sits in the wider Hakusui district, where spring-fed channels crisscross for tens of kilometres. Residents’ water-source groups have organized cleanups since before World War II.
The Environment Agency selected Shirakawa for Japan’s “100 Famous Waters” in 1985. The spring is also protected as part of a Minamiaso Village natural-environment conservation area.
At Yoshimi Shrine’s summer festival on July 19, 2026, children carried a mikoshi for the first time. The new children’s shrine was introduced to help pass the local festival tradition on to the next generation.
