残したい日本の音風景100選
The 100 Soundscapes of Japan are 100 sounds, and the places you hear them, that Japan's Environment Agency chose in 1996 as worth protecting. Some are nature: drift ice creaking off Hokkaido in February, or the cicadas at Yamadera, where Basho wrote his most famous haiku. Some are clockwork: Kawagoe's wooden bell tower chiming four times a day, and the drum on the roof of Dogo Onsen that opens the bathhouse at 6 am. The rest are festivals, crafts, bells and harbours, spread from Hokkaido to Iriomote. As of September 2026 one listed sound is out of reach: no steam train has reached Kawanehon, the Oigawa Railway's listed spot, since a 2022 typhoon. The Cape Muroto sea cave, which many lists still call closed, has been open again since 2019.
You've visited 0 of 100
Saved on this device. Sign in to keep it on every device.
The one with the best story: climb the 1,015 steps where Basho wrote his cicada haiku in 1689, in the same weeks of summer he did.
Half a day from Yamagata or Sendai
The easiest to catch: a 16 m wooden bell tower that chimes at 6:00, 12:00, 15:00 and 18:00, a short train ride from Tokyo, in a warehouse district worth the trip on its own.
Half a day from Tokyo
Five chances a day to hear a bell cast in 1844, rung below one of Japan's 12 original castle keeps, so one visit covers two lists.
Half a day from Kyoto
Set an alarm: the 6 am drum from the bathhouse roof means Dogo Onsen Honkan is open, and you can be in the water minutes later.
An early morning in Matsuyama
The loudest entry on the list and the one with the most exact start time: the float race leaves Kushida Shrine at 4:59 am on July 15.
One pre-dawn morning in Fukuoka (July 15)
Grouped by region, north to south. Tick an entry to mark it visited.
Showing 100 of 100
From late January to mid-March the pack ice drifts down onto Hokkaido's Okhotsk coast, and on a still day you can hear the floes squeal, groan and creak as they grind together. The ministry names Kitahama beach in Abashiri and the Usutaibe Senjoiwa rocks in Esashi as listening points.
Best: Late January to mid-March.
The clock went into the drill hall of the Sapporo Agricultural College in August 1881, and its bell has struck the hours over central Sapporo ever since. Office blocks now box the wooden tower in, so the sound carries far less than it did.
Hakodate calls this church 'Gangan-dera', the clanging temple, after its bells, which ring at the start and end of services: Saturday vespers from 5 pm and the Sunday liturgy from 10 am. The white church dates from 1916 and reopened in 2023 after a two-year restoration.
On the nature trails above Asahidake Onsen, at the foot of Hokkaido's highest peak (2,291 m), early walkers hear Japanese robins, winter wrens and red-flanked bluetails, plus the sharp whistle of the pika. The Ainu called these mountains the garden where the gods play.
Best: April to early June, early morning. Our asahikawa guide
Winter feeding at the Tsurui-Ito Tancho Sanctuary brings red-crowned cranes in off the snowfields, sometimes more than 300 at once. Listen for pairs calling in loud, ringing duets with their bills pointed at the sky, and for the alarm calls when a fox comes near.
Best: Late October to mid-March.
About 40,000 black-tailed gulls nest on this small island by Hachinohe harbour, arriving in late February and leaving in August; their mewing calls are why the Japanese name, umineko, means 'sea cat'. The shrine on top burned in 2015 and was rebuilt by 2020.
Best: March to July.
The reed and sedge flats of Hotokenuma, by Lake Ogawara in Misawa, are a breeding ground for the endangered marsh grassbird and the ochre-rumped bunting, both singing in early summer; the marsh has been a Ramsar site since 2005.
Best: Late May to late July.
The Oirase runs about 14 km from Nenokuchi on Lake Towada down to Yakeyama, alternating quiet riffles with waterfalls such as the 7 m Choshi Otaki. The ministry sends listeners to the stretch above Mamonbashi bridge and to the Ashura rapids.
Best: May to October. Our aomori guide
Aomori's Nebuta runs August 2–7 and Hirosaki's Neputa August 1–7: giant lit floats hauled through the streets to taiko drums and flutes, and in Aomori the dancers' chant of 'Rasserah, rasserah'.
Best: August 1–7. Our aomori guide
Waves driven into a sea cave on this rias coast squeeze the air inside and release it with a boom like thunder, which gave Kaminari-iwa its name. It carries on all but the calmest days, loudest on the path from Ranbodani to the front of the rock.
Mizusawa is a Nanbu ironware town, and every summer hundreds of its cast-iron wind chimes hang over the JR Tohoku Line platforms, each a slightly different shape and pitch. They go up in early June and stay through the summer.
Best: June to August.
On the second Saturday of June about 100 horses in bright harnesses hung with bells walk 14 km from Onikoshi Sozen Shrine in Takizawa to Morioka Hachimangu, and the 'chagu chagu' of the bells gives the parade its name.
Best: Second Saturday of June.
Sendai's Miyagino district has long been known for its suzumushi, said locally to ring seven times per phrase. On autumn nights they trill in the woods of Takamori-yama, Masue-no-mori and Tsurugaya Chuo Park, where residents protect them as 'the sound of Miyagino'.
Best: Early August until the first frost, at night.
Only 1–2 km from central Sendai, the Hirose River carries the flute-like trills of kajika frogs from late May to August, best at dawn and dusk. Wagtails, kingfishers and crested kingfishers call year-round on the riverbed between Ohashi and Hyojogawara bridges.
Best: Late May to August, early morning and evening.
From early summer to early winter the wind across the lower Kitakami sets the reed beds of Ishinomaki rustling in waves, a sound that runs across the whole flat. Local people cut the reeds each early winter.
Best: Early summer to early winter.
These shallow lakes, a Ramsar site since 1985, are a main wintering ground for greater white-fronted geese. Come at sunrise, when the flocks lift off together in a roar of wings and calls, or at sunset when they return.
Best: Mid-October to late February, at sunrise and sunset.
About 7 million black pines, planted from 1711 onward to hold back the sand, form a coastal forest 14 km long on Noshiro's Sea of Japan shore. The sound listed is shoto, wind hissing through the needles, clearest in early morning before the town's traffic starts.
Basho stopped at Risshaku-ji in 1689 and wrote 'such stillness: the cicadas' cry sinks into the rocks'. From late July to mid-August the cicadas still fill the cedar forest around the 1,015 stone steps; listen above the Semizuka mound and on up toward the Godaido hall.
Getting there: JR Senzan Line to Yamadera Station, about 20 min from Yamagata. Best: Late July to mid-August. Our yamagata guide
Through December, mountain priests preparing for Mount Haguro's New Year's Eve Shoreisai festival go door to door around Tsuruoka collecting offerings, blowing conch shells and praying for each household. The round starts on December 1 at the city's Hie Shrine.
Best: December 1–31.
Swans arrive from early October and stay until they head north in April. At the Mogami River Swan Park in Sakata their calls peak at the morning and evening feeds, during courtship and when flocks take off.
Best: October to April.
A wooded sanctuary on the edge of Fukushima city where great tits, Japanese thrushes and black paradise flycatchers sing loudest from spring into early summer. The nature centre has resident rangers who explain what you are hearing.
Best: April to June.
Mountain water runs in open channels down both sides of the single 450 m street of thatched houses, a post town on the old Aizu-Nishi Kaido. The channels have supplied the village since the Edo period and are still part of daily life.
Showa, deep in Oku-Aizu, is Honshu's only producer of karamushi (ramie) fibre, grown here since at least the Muromachi period, and the clack of hand looms carries through the village. It is clearest in winter, when snow deadens every other sound; the Karamushi-ori no Sato roadside station has a museum and weaving workshops.
Best: Winter.
Pacific swells break against the cliffs and coves of Izura, the 'five inlets', below the hexagonal Rokkakudo pavilion that Okakura Tenshin built in 1905. The 2011 tsunami swept the pavilion away, and it was rebuilt to its original design in April 2012.
Best: Winter, when the sea is rough.
About 1,000 stone steps climb through forest to Ohirasan Shrine above Tochigi city, lined with hydrangeas. In the June rains the tree frogs along the slope call over the patter of water, loudest around the middle of the steps.
Best: Late June to early July.
A suikinkutsu is a jar buried under a stone basin that turns dripping water into faint, bell-like notes. This one is in Suikintei, a 4,000-tsubo (about 1.3 ha) Japanese garden finished in 1991 on a college campus in Yoshii.
The college that built the garden closed, and its successor university was dissolved in March 2013. Since January 2018 the site has been the Grand Hills Takasaki nursing-care complex, which its operator, the Tohwa Group, says includes the Suikintei garden. We could not confirm public visiting hours as of September 2026, so contact the facility before going.
The 16 m wooden bell tower at the heart of Kawagoe's old warehouse district rings automatically four times a day, at 6:00, 12:00, 15:00 and 18:00. It was braced against earthquakes in a 2015–2017 restoration.
Getting there: Tobu Tojo Line to Kawagoe-shi Station, then about 10 min on foot to the south end of the warehouse district; the tower is at its heart. Our saitama guide
Where the Arakawa's floodplain at Oshikiri has been left almost untouched, pine crickets, bell crickets, field crickets and katydids strike up together as dusk falls, from about 6 pm.
Best: Late August to early October, evenings.
Nicknamed the 'jaa-jaa bridge', it recalls the flume that carried irrigation water over the Ono River from the Edo period. Water spills from it into the canal every 30 minutes from 9:00 to 17:00, in front of the former house of the mapmaker Ino Tadataka.
Getting there: 15 min walk from JR Sawara Station.
The Mabara plateau in the Boso hills is a stronghold of the small himeharuzemi cicada. A few start up, then the whole hillside joins in a buzzing 'jaa-jaa' chorus that stops as suddenly as it began.
Best: Mid-July to early August.
The busy shop-lined approach to Shibamata Taishakuten in Tokyo, then the small ferry across the Edogawa to Matsudo, with skylarks and gulls over the river. The ferry runs 10:00–16:00 (¥300), most days in the warm months but only on weekends and holidays from December to early March.
Getting there: 10 min walk from Keisei Shibamata Station to the ferry landing.
Cast in 1787 and still struck at 6:00, 12:00 and 18:00 on the hill in Ueno Park near the Ueno Daibutsu. Basho's haiku asked whether the bell he heard through the cherry blossom was Ueno's or Asakusa's.
Getting there: In Ueno Park; JR Ueno Station's Park Exit is the closest. Visitor guide · Our tokyo guide
A pond in Shakujii Park, ringed by Nerima's streets, where the wingbeats of waterbirds, lapping water and wind in old trees drown out the city. Walk the path around the edge and the sounds come from all sides.
About 500 m of old zelkova trees line the avenue into the Seikei school campus near Kichijoji, and the sound changes with the season: soft new leaves in spring, dry leaves skittering in autumn, bare branches knocking in winter wind. Best early in the morning, walking in from the main road.
At midnight on New Year's Eve the ships in Yokohama harbour, from pleasure boats to liners, sound their horns together. Crowds gather along Yamashita Park, where the old liner Hikawa Maru is moored.
Best: Midnight, December 31 to January 1. Our yokohama guide
Candy makers along the Nakamise approach chop sticks of candy with a rhythmic 'tonto-kotonto' of blade on board. It is loudest in the New Year crowds at Kawasaki Daishi, the temple credited with starting the modern custom of the New Year visit by train.
Best: January to February.
A park laid out around the headwaters of the Doho, a small tributary of the Sagami River, where a clear stream runs under woodland and white-eyes and great tits sing. There is a bird-watching hut on the forest path.
Fukushimagata is Japan's largest wintering ground for the taiga bean goose, a national natural monument, and their deep honks roll across the lagoon on winter mornings. More than 220 bird species have been recorded here.
Best: October to March.
In the grove around the thatched Nou Hakusan Shrine, the himeharuzemi cicadas sing in waves: a lead male starts, the rest follow in unison, then all fall silent together. Listen in the red pines of the shrine forest, from early morning to sunset.
Best: Mid-July to early August.
On the edge of the Aokigahara forest north of Lake Saiko, and in the lake's Wild Bird Forest Park, spring brings cuckoos, wrens and tits, with Mount Fuji close enough to fill the view.
Best: April to May.
The temple bell, cast in 1667, tells the hour every hour from 10:00 to 16:00, and in 1998 it rang to open the Nagano Winter Olympics. The belfry to the right of the main hall stands on six pillars, one for each character of the nembutsu.
Getting there: 25–30 min walk from JR Nagano Station, or a short bus ride to Daimon. Visitor guide · Our nagano guide
The Enrei hills between Okaya and Shiojiri are a prefectural bird forest, where cuckoos, narcissus flycatchers and brown-headed thrushes sing in early summer above views of Lake Suwa, the Yatsugatake range and the Southern Alps.
Best: Early summer.
In June the Schlegel's green tree frogs of this high marsh near Kirigamine start a rolling 'kararara', higher than the common tree frog, joined by the 'kakakka' of montane brown frogs. A walking path circles the marsh.
Best: June to July.
At 350 m, Japan's tallest waterfall drops in four stages from the Midagahara plateau of Tateyama into a gorge walled by 500 m cliffs. The road to the viewing area is open from late April to the end of November.
Best: Late April to November.
Water channels called enaka run along the sloping streets of Yatsuo and gurgle all year. For three nights from September 1 they are drowned out by the Owara Kaze no Bon, when shamisen, kokyu fiddle and the slow Owara song drift through the lanes, with eve-of-festival dancing on August 20–30.
Best: September 1–3 (Owara).
About 300 carvers work in Inami, a craft that grew from rebuilding Zuisen-ji temple in the 1760s and 1770s. The tap of mallet on chisel comes from workshops all over town, and most densely along Yokamachi-dori, the approach to the temple.
A strip of old broadleaf woods just south of Kenroku-en, where on summer mornings and evenings the higurashi cicadas pour down their falling 'kana-kana' calls. Locals know the slope from Hirosaka to Yomezaka best.
Best: Early July to August, mornings and evenings.
About 70 temples crowd this quarter south of the Sai River, including Myoryu-ji, the 'Ninja Temple', and it became a national preservation district in 2012. The ministry's listing describes six temples ringing together every Saturday at 6 pm, organised by a local bell-ringing society; the back lanes away from traffic are the place to hear them.
An intermittent cold spring at about 350 m on Mount Ohira: a siphon in the limestone empties at irregular intervals, the flow peaks about 8 minutes in, and the rush of water in the gully dies away after roughly half an hour. Charcoal burners once told the time by it, hence 'time water'.
In the courtyard garden of the former Imai house, now the Mino Historical Museum, water from a stone basin drips into a buried jar and rings like a koto string. The house stands among the fire-wall (udatsu) roofed merchant houses of Mino's old town.
In summer the children of Gujo Hachiman jump from the Shinbashi bridge into the clear Yoshida River that runs through the middle of town, and their shouts, the splashes and the rushing water are the town's summer sound. Shinbashi and the Miyagase area are the spots.
Best: July to August.
Every night from May 11 to October 15, except the harvest-moon night and when the river is high, the imperial household's cormorant masters fish by firelight. Boatmen drum on the gunwales to rouse the birds, the masters call 'ho-ho', and the fire baskets crackle over the water.
Best: May 11 to October 15. Our gifu guide
Along Enshu-nada's long sandy coast the surf sometimes sets up a deep roar before the weather changes. Locals call it Namikozo, the 'wave boy', and say that heard from the east it means bad weather, from the west fine.
The listed sound is a steam locomotive's whistle echoing up the Oi River valley in Kawanehon, heard with the birdsong of spring and early summer. The ministry's listening point is Chisha-no-oka Park near Senzu.
Typhoon damage in September 2022 cut the line between Kawane-Onsen-Sasamado and Senzu, so no train has reached Kawanehon since; the Oigawa Railway still listed the section as suspended in September 2026. Funding for repairs (about ¥2.1 billion) was agreed in March 2025. The SL still runs from Shin-Kanaya to Ieyama and Kawane-Onsen-Sasamado in Shimada, where you can hear the whistle.
The botanical side of Nagoya's Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens is laid out on natural hills, and its Man'yoshu garden and forest paths ring with great tits and white-eyes. The mix of birds is widest in spring and autumn, and mornings are busiest.
Best: Spring and autumn, mornings.
The surf on this white-sand beach at the tip of the Atsumi Peninsula is heaviest in spring and summer and gentler in autumn and winter. Offshore lies Kamishima, the island of Mishima Yukio's novel The Sound of Waves.
When an ama diver surfaces she lets out her breath in a thin whistle, the isobue, a breathing technique that sounds like a lonely flute. The surest time to hear many at once is Sugashima's Shirongo festival, on the Saturday nearest July 11, when a conch signals the island's ama to dive together for abalone off a beach closed to fishing the rest of the year.
Best: Shirongo festival, the Saturday nearest July 11. Our tsu guide
The 'evening bell of Mii' is one of the Eight Views of Omi, and the bell is counted among Japan's three famous bells for its tone. It was cast in 1602 to succeed the older 'Benkei's bell', which the temple keeps in a hall of its own.
The castle bell, cast in 1844, still rings five times a day, at 6:00, 9:00, 12:00, 15:00 and 18:00, from beside the Taikomon gate below the keep. Summer evenings bring higurashi cicadas on the castle hill, and in autumn bell crickets and pine crickets sing in the Genkyu-en garden.
Getting there: 15 min walk from JR Hikone Station to the castle, then uphill to the bell below the keep. Best: Cicadas late July to late August; crickets September to October. Our otsu guide
The listed groves are in Sagano, on the path from Nonomiya Shrine to Jojakko-ji, and in Rakusai around Saiho-ji, Jizo-in and the Rakusai Bamboo Park; in wind the stems knock and the leaves hiss like surf. Come early: by 10 am on weekends the Sagano path is packed.
Best: May to June for the freshest green. Visitor guide · Our kyoto guide
A gorge on a plateau at about 500 m in Nantan, where the stream drops through a chain of named falls and pools, the 'twelve views of Rurikei'. The trail ends at a 12.5 m curtain of falling water.
The quartz-rich white sand squeaks 'kyu-kyu' underfoot and grunts when pushed by hand, but only while it stays clean and dry, which is why the beach went smoke-free in 2001. Best in spring, heard along Taikohama and the stretch west of it.
Best: Spring, on dry days.
On the grass flats of the Yodo River at Oyodo, with the lights of Umeda and Juso on either bank, pine crickets sing their clear 'chin-chirorin' on autumn nights. The paths through the long grass are the place to listen.
Best: Autumn, from just before sunset into the night.
Jokoji is known as the birthplace of Kawachi Ondo, the long narrative chant of Osaka's bon dances, sung here in its original form. On the nights of August 23 and 24 its Jizo-bon dance circles the temple grounds.
Getting there: About 550 m on foot from the west exit of Kintetsu Yao Station, through the shopping arcade. Best: August 23–24.
The listed sound is the fleet heading out before dawn at the start of the spring ikanago (sand lance) season, gulls crying over boats hauling up nets of silver fry, the catch Kobe homes simmer into kugi-ni.
The sand lance catch has collapsed in recent years. Hyogo Prefecture records the Osaka Bay season as voluntarily skipped in 2024, 2025 and 2026, and the Harima-nada season lasting one to three days (March 17–18 in 2026). Hearing a fleet go out is now a matter of a few March mornings at most.
Best: March.
On October 14 and 15 the float drums of seven old villages pound at Matsubara Hachiman Shrine and up the terraced slopes of Otabiyama, which spectators fill like a natural stand, while three portable shrines are rammed together.
Best: October 14–15. Our himeji guide
Deer call across the Kasugano meadows at any hour, and the temple bells mark the day: the ministry lists Kofuku-ji's bell at 6:00, noon and 18:00 and Todai-ji's 26-ton bell, one of Japan's three famous bells, at 8 pm.
Getting there: 5 min walk from Kintetsu Nara Station to Nara Park. Visitor guide · Our nara guide
Near the top of Fudo-yama a great boulder has a hole about 20 cm across. Put your ear to it and you hear a low murmur that locals call the Kinokawa flowing far below, or 'the sounds of this world and the next'.
Japan's tallest single-drop waterfall, 133 m, worshipped in its own right in the Kumano faith. On the approach you hear it long before you see it; the ridge by Nachi Taisha blocks even the sound, and the roar returns with the fall itself as you walk down the stone path beyond.
Best: After heavy rain. Our wakayama guide
The Tsubasa pond on the shore of Lake Nakaumi is the night roost of western Japan's largest wintering flock of tundra swans, and up to about 10,000 birds of over 100 species pass through in a year. The nature centre windows face the pond.
Best: Mid-October to mid-March.
The Mitoku River runs between the inns of Misasa Onsen, and at dusk from June to September the kajika frogs add their flute-like 'fe-rururu, horohoro' to the rapids. Koidani bridge is the place to stand.
Best: June to September, at dusk.
In Aoya and Saji, the two Inshu washi districts of Tottori city, papermakers rock their screens again and again through vats of mitsumata and other fibres, a steady 'chappon, chappon' from morning to evening while the paper is being made.
Walk the band of sand 4–5 m above the waterline and it squeaks 'kyu-kyu' underfoot. The beach is also where the town swims, dances at Obon and holds sports days, and residents clean it together to keep the sand singing.
Cold water pours out of Suwado, a limestone cave explored to about 1,750 m, into the Bitchu River beside Hotaru Park, named for the fireflies of early summer. The listing pairs this stream with a riverside waterwheel.
Only about the first 10 m of the cave can be visited (Maniwa tourism association); the steel walkway further in has deteriorated. The stream outside is unaffected.
Small channels run beside the old Izumo Kaido through the post town of Shinjo, under the Gaisen-zakura cherry trees that line the road, and still serve the houses as everyday water.
Best: Cherry blossom and autumn leaves.
Peace Memorial Park has three: the bell rung at the August 6 ceremony, a bell any visitor may strike, and a clock-tower chime that sounds every morning at 8:15, the minute the bomb exploded in 1945.
Struck every evening at 6 pm from the hilltop temple above Onomichi, the bell has told the town the time since the Genroku era (from 1688), carrying over the slopes and the harbour to the islands of the Seto Inland Sea. The belfry was rebuilt in 1890.
Steam has hauled the SL Yamaguchi between Shin-Yamaguchi and Tsuwano since 1979, whistling through the valleys of the Yamaguchi Line on operating days from spring to late autumn. When the steam engine is out of service a diesel stands in as the 'DL Yamaguchi', as happened on August 16, 2026.
Best: Operating days, March to November. Our yamaguchi guide
Tides forcing through the 1.3 km-wide Naruto Strait spin up whirlpools up to 20 m across that roar as they collide, largest at the spring tides of spring and autumn. A sightseeing boat takes you close enough to hear them properly.
Best: Spring and autumn spring tides. Our tokushima guide
Shamisen, drums, flutes and bells play the two-beat 'zomeki' rhythm while the dance troupes chant. Tokushima City's festival runs August 12–15, and practice sessions echo around town from July.
Best: August 12–15; practice from July. Our tokushima guide
Okubo-ji is the 88th and last temple of the Shikoku pilgrimage, so the jingle of pilgrims' hand bells here is the sound of long walks ending, with the temple bell ringing over them. Busiest in spring and autumn.
Best: Spring and autumn.
Japan's largest irrigation reservoir opens its sluice (yurunuki) each mid-June before rice planting, and about 4 tonnes of water a second rush out to the fields of the Sanuki plain. Listen from the Hotarumi park below the dam.
Best: Mid-June.
The drum in the Shinrokaku turret on the roof of Dogo Onsen Honkan is beaten three times a day, at 6:00, noon and 18:00, and the 6 am drum announces the bathhouse opening. The building fully reopened in July 2024 after years of earthquake-proofing.
Getting there: About 25 min by Iyotetsu tram from JR Matsuyama Station to Dogo Onsen. Our matsuyama guide
Pacific swells boom against the rocks of Cape Muroto and echo inside Mikurodo, the sea cave where Kukai is said to have lived while training about 1,200 years ago and to have taken his name, 'sky and sea', from the view out of its mouth.
Rockfalls closed Mikurodo in November 2015 (the neighbouring Shinmeikutsu from October 2012). Steel canopies were built over the entrances and entry resumed at the end of April 2019. Muroto City gives entry hours of 8:00–17:00, stopped in bad weather, and visitors must wear a helmet, lent on site. Some lists, including Japanese Wikipedia's soundscape table, still describe the cave as off-limits.
Getting there: About 1 hr by bus from Nahari Station (Gomen-Nahari Line) to Misaki Hotel-mae, then a 3 min walk.
For the first half of July, teams carrying floats on their shoulders run through Hakata shouting 'oissa, oissa' while onlookers throw water on them. The climax, the Oiyama race, leaves Kushida Shrine at 4:59 am on July 15.
Getting there: 5 min walk from Gion Station (Fukuoka subway), Exit 2, to Kushida Shrine. Best: July 1–15; Oiyama at 4:59 am on July 15. Visitor guide · Our fukuoka guide
Said to be Japan's oldest temple bell and a National Treasure, it is not rung freely: the ministry lists it on the 18th of each month at 1 pm and on New Year's Eve. Sugawara no Michizane, exiled to Dazaifu, wrote that he could only listen to its voice.
At Hayatomo-no-seto the strait between Honshu and Kyushu narrows to about 700 m, and the tidal race and the horns of passing ships are loudest at the big spring tides. Listen from Mekari Park on the Moji side or the Mimosusogawa Park shore in Shimonoseki.
Fourteen giant lacquered floats are hauled through Karatsu's old castle town on November 2–4 to flutes, drums and gongs, each with its own tune, and the pullers' 'enya, enya'. Through October the practice sessions carry around town in the evenings.
Best: November 2–4; practice through October. Our saga guide
In Okawachiyama, the walled valley where the Nabeshima lords' kilns made porcelain for more than 300 years, you hear water-driven hammers crushing stone for clay, porcelain wind chimes hung on a tower, and potter's wheels turning.
Two great camphor trees about 800 m from the 1945 hypocentre were burned bare and looked dead, then sprouted again; their leaves now rustle over the shrine grounds, near the shrine's one-legged torii.
Built in 1854 to carry water across a gorge to the dry Shiraito plateau, this stone aqueduct became the first civil-engineering work named a National Treasure, in 2023. On release days, set on a calendar Yamato town publishes each year, wooden plugs are knocked out and jets arc from its sides for about 15 minutes.
Getting there: About 1 hr 30 min by Kumamoto Bus from Kumamoto Sakuramachi Bus Terminal to Tsujunkyo-mae. Best: Release days on the town's calendar.
About 200 wild Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins live off Tsushi Island at the north tip of Amakusa, and boats from Futae reach them in about 10 minutes. Listen for the puff of their breath as they surface around the boat.
In this pottery hamlet in the hills above Hita, wooden hammers driven by the stream thump the clay all year, as they have since the mid-Edo period, and nine families still make Onta ware by hand. Floods in 2017 and 2023 wrecked many of the mills; the potters rebuilt them.
Taki Rentaro is said to have pictured these high stone walls when he wrote 'Kojo no Tsuki' (The Moon over the Ruined Castle). The listed sound is the wind in the old pines of the main enclosure, which looks out over the Sobo, Kuju and Aso ranges.
Best: Mid-autumn to early winter.
A 1 km trail through 11 tunnels, once a trolley line for charcoal and timber, follows the Iwase River past the 32 m Byobu-iwa cliff to Yagura-no-todoro, a 7.5 m fall whose roar booms inside its enclosed basin.
The trail beyond the 8th tunnel was closed after fallen trees and reopened on December 12, 2025 (Kobayashi City).
Sika deer move in herds across this 1,200 m volcanic plateau in the Kirishima range, and in autumn the stags' high 'kiin, kiin' calls to the hinds carry across the grass after dark. The picnic area near the visitor centre and the campground are the listening spots.
Best: Autumn, evening to early morning.
About 10,000 hooded cranes and some 3,000 white-naped cranes winter in the rice fields of the Izumi plain, a Ramsar site since 2021, and their 'kruu, kruu' calls fill the sky. The crane observation centre in Arasaki puts you among them.
Best: Mid-October to March.
The Anbo forest railway, built to haul Yakushima cedar, still runs beside the island's mountain streams, but not for passengers: the power company uses the lower tracks and the upper section carries supplies for trail toilets, mostly in winter. Jomon-sugi hikers walk those rails from the Arakawa trailhead, so hearing a trolley is luck.
Mangroves line the Shiira River on Iriomote, and each season has its own voices: Ryukyu scops owls at night, ruddy kingfishers at dawn and dusk from April to September, and Ryukyu cicadas through the summer days.
Best: April to September. Our ishigaki guide
Eisa is Okinawa's Obon dance for the ancestors, sung and danced to big drums and sanshin. The listed troupe is the Yakena Youth Association, founded in 1890, which parades through the village on the 15th and 16th of the seventh lunar month, with practice audible for about two months before.
Best: Lunar Obon, the 15th–16th of the seventh lunar month.
Be under the Toki no Kane in Ueno Park when it is struck at noon. Then take the Keisei Line from Keisei-Ueno, changing at Keisei-Takasago for Shibamata, and walk the shop-lined approach to Shibamata Taishakuten. The Yagiri ferry landing on the Edogawa is about 10 min on foot from Shibamata Station; the boat runs 10:00–16:00 and, from December to early March, only on weekends and holidays. All by train, and it fits between lunch and dusk.
残したい日本の音風景100選 translates as "the 100 Japanese soundscapes we want to keep." In autumn 1995 the Environment Agency, which then ran Japan's environmental policy (it became the Ministry of the Environment in 2001), asked a panel to look at sound the other way round. Noise drew more complaints than any other of Japan's seven classic forms of pollution, and the agency's work had mostly meant measuring and cutting it. Since 1993 it had also funded model cities that used the "soundscape" approach, treating sound as part of a place, like its landscape. The list was the next step: ask people which everyday sounds they would miss, and protect the conditions that let them be heard.
Nominations ran from January to late March 1996 and drew 738 entries from local governments, individuals and citizens' groups. A nine-member panel chaired by Mitsuyasu Yamashita, head of the Kobayashi Institute of Physical Research, with the Seishin Women's University scholar Keiko Torigoe and the music critic Reiko Yukawa among its members, read every entry and judged each on how closely people lived with the sound, the state of the sound itself, and local efforts to protect it, while keeping a regional balance. The result was announced on June 5, 1996. The ministry counts 31 entries of living things, 19 of water, waves and weather, 37 of human life (festivals, bells, crafts and transport), 12 mixtures and one it could not classify. Yamashita wrote that a spring near his institute stopped being used as a dump once it made the 100 Remarkable Waters list, and hoped these 100 sounds would do the same for noise.
The ministry's list still carries all 100 as chosen in 1996, but the places have moved on. The steam trains of the Oigawa Railway have not reached the listed spot in Kawanehon since a typhoon cut the line in September 2022. The garden at Suikintei outlived the college that built it and now sits inside a nursing-care complex. The sand lance fishery behind Tarumi's entry has all but stopped: the Osaka Bay season has been skipped three years running. Floods wrecked the clay mills of Onta in 2017 and again in 2023, and the potters rebuilt them. The 2011 tsunami took the Rokkakudo pavilion above the Izura coast, rebuilt in 2012. And the Mikurodo sea cave at Cape Muroto, closed for rockfall in 2015 and still described as closed in many lists, reopened with steel canopies over its entrance in 2019. We check each entry against the operator's or town's own announcements.
The list also makes a decent game board. Japanorama, the 2026 season of Jet Lag: The Game and its second run through Japan, is a seven-day race from the southernmost station in the country to the northernmost, and one of the cards on the board is Record an Iconic Sound: catch any one of these 100, on the move, between trains. Treat your own trip the same way. Pick the three or four that fall along your route and let them decide where you get off.
A list of 100 sounds, each tied to a place, chosen in 1996 by Japan's Environment Agency as worth preserving. In Japanese it is 残したい日本の音風景100選. It covers nature (drift ice, cranes, cicadas, waterfalls), bells and drums (Kawagoe's Toki no Kane, Dogo Onsen's time drum), festivals (Nebuta, Awa Odori, Eisa) and working sounds such as Onta's clay mills and Inami's woodcarvers.
The Environment Agency (now the Ministry of the Environment) took public nominations from January to March 1996 and received 738. A nine-member panel chaired by Mitsuyasu Yamashita of the Kobayashi Institute of Physical Research picked 100, weighing how closely people live with each sound and what is being done to protect it. The list was announced on June 5, 1996.
Nearly all. As of September 2026 the one clear exception is the Oigawa Railway steam train at its listed spot in Kawanehon: the line there has been cut since a September 2022 typhoon, though the SL still runs further down the valley in Shimada. Tarumi's sand lance fishery has shrunk to a few days a year at most, the Suikintei water chime now sits in a nursing-home garden, and most of Suwado cave is closed, though the stream outside still runs.
Yes. Rockfalls closed Mikurodo in November 2015, and some lists still say you cannot hear its echoes. Steel canopies were built over the entrances and visitors have been allowed in again since the end of April 2019. Muroto City gives entry hours of 8:00–17:00, stopped in bad weather, and you must wear a helmet, which you can borrow on site.
Inside Tokyo: the Toki no Kane bell in Ueno Park (6:00, 12:00 and 18:00), Shibamata Taishakuten and the Yagiri ferry, Sanpoji Pond in Shakujii Park and the Seikei zelkova avenue in Kichijoji. Day trips: Kawagoe's bell tower, the candy makers on the Kawasaki Daishi approach, Yokohama's ships' horns at midnight on New Year's Eve, and Sawara's Toyohashi bridge, which spills water every 30 minutes.
The festivals: Chagu Chagu Umakko (second Saturday of June), Hakata Gion Yamakasa (July 1–15), Nebuta and Neputa (early August), Awa Odori (August 12–15), Jokoji's Kawachi Ondo (August 23–24), Owara Kaze no Bon (September 1–3), the Nada fighting festival (October 14–15), Karatsu Kunchi (November 2–4) and Yakena's Eisa at lunar Obon. Also Yokohama's horns at midnight on January 1, Sugashima's ama festival near July 11, and the Tsujun Bridge water release on its calendar days.