NIKKO, Tochigi Prefecture—For those who come to marvel at Kegon Falls here, one of "Japan's three great waterfalls," it is as if Mother Nature has turned off the faucet. 

Despite receiving above-average rainfall since the beginning of the year, the falls is a mere shadow of its former glorious self, reduced to a sad trickle. 

Kegon Falls has a stunning drop of 96 meters and its water volume is controlled by a sluice gate upstream.

Normally, during the daytime when tourists visit, the water volume is adjusted to 1 to 2.5 tons per second.

However, according to the prefectural government’s sand and water resources division, since the beginning of the year, the fall’s water volume has been limited to 0.1 tons per second on weekdays and 0.3 tons on weekends.

Normally, a 7-meter-wide stream of water thunders down all at once toward the basin.

But with the current scant volume, the water is simply carried away by the wind leaving the rock surface behind the falls exposed.

Tourists taking pictures at the observatory have been surprised and disappointed.

Koichi Kondo, 69, who visited along with his wife from Kariya, Aichi Prefecture, said, “We were looking forward to this trip.”

Although he knew beforehand that the falls had less water than usual, “It’s still shocking to see in person,” he admitted.

According to a man who runs a photo shop at the observatory, the waterfall needs at least 2 to 3 tons per second for a spectacular picture.

“Because it’s rare to see so little water here, some people enjoy it as a curiosity,” the man said. “But children who come to the observatory for the first time seem to be disappointed.”

The cause of the anomaly can be traced upstream to Lake Chuzenjiko, the source of the waterfall.

According to the prefectural civil engineering office’s Nikko branch, which manages the lake, the water level usually drops in the autumn when the precipitation decreases, but rises again from the spring onward.

But this year, the level has remained low, officials said.

In late March, the water level had dropped about 90 centimeters below normal.

As a result, the amount of water released from the sluice gate leading to Kegon Falls has been reduced so much that the waterfall is barely visible, officials said.

The water discharge has even been stopped at night completely.

Despite these measures, the lake’s water level is still about 40 cm below normal, officials said.

The impact has been felt among sightseeing business operators at Lake Chuzenjiko as well.

Until mid-June, two of the four piers where sightseeing boats normally docked were inoperable due to insufficient water depth.

Even now, the boats cannot dock at a pier leading to a park, which is home to villas built by foreign embassies during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) through the Showa Era (1926-1989).

The villas are located only 100 meters from the pier, but are more than 1 kilometer from the parking lot by foot.

A staff member of the Italian Embassy Villa Memorial Park said, “It is regrettable that (visitors) can no longer enjoy a leisurely tour around the lake. We hope that the lake will somehow recover before the summer tourist season.”

Kazuyuki Yamada, deputy manager of Chuzenjiko-yuransen, a pleasure boat operator, said, “Some school excursions have been canceled because the courses cannot be arranged as planned. The water level is gradually rising, but at the current pace, it will probably take two to three more weeks to recover.”

Why has the water level dropped so low?

Some have attributed it to a delay in the onset of rainy season this year, but the exact cause is not yet known.

Comparing the average monthly precipitation for the area around Oku-Nikko, where the lake is located, compiled by the Japan Meteorological Agency from 1991 to 2020, with the data since last fall, precipitation since last autumn was nearly 20 percent higher than average.

Since the beginning of the year, April was the only month that had below average rainfall.

However, an obvious anomaly occurred in September and October in 2023 during typhoon season.

In both months, precipitation was only about half the average.

It is said that the water holding capacity of the forest soil is three times greater than that in urban areas.

The lack of sufficient water absorbed by the ground that autumn, when water retention is usually strong, may have had an impact.

A prefectural official said that the lake is a natural formation and it is believed to leak 4.6 tons of water per second even without discharging water through the sluice, making the lake more difficult to manage than ordinary dams.

“We hope we can release the normal amount of water as soon as possible, but we do not know when that will be,” the representative said.