Japan's Great Dams

About this book

Two hundred real Japanese dams — the 186-metre arch of Kurobe and the vast held valleys of Okutadami and Tokuyama, a Kobe waterworks wall of 1900 and a masonry multiple-arch in Kagawa, rockfill staircases down the Takase and the Tadami, the world's first RCD dam, a dam that neutralises an acid river, a seventh-century pond still at work in Osaka, and village irrigation dams under beech forest and Yanbaru jungle — each told the same four ways, and told in depth: The Dam & Its Story (what it holds back, when and why it was built, what form holds it), What to Look For (the structure, the view or the phenomenon that repays attention), The Lake, the Valley & Local Food (the water the dam made, the gorge below the wall, and what its district eats), and Visiting & Cautions (a practical outline, checked November 2026, never a promise).

Travel guides give you Kurobe and stop. Japanese dam culture — its books, its dam cards, its pilgrim enthusiasts — is deep and has no English edition. This is the missing book: Japan read from its held water, 200 dams, every entry over 200 words — in fact over 380 — at $9.99. Learn to read a watershed from its wall, a castle town from its waterworks dam, a drowned valley from its shoreline shrine, and discover that the small earth dam at the end of a farm road often teaches the country more honestly than a celebrated giant.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.