Charlie Chaplin said if you’re looking for rainbows, look up to the sky; you won’t find them by looking down. True enough. But if you’re visiting Japan, looking down has its own rewards.

The country’s manhole covers are a delightful surprise for visitors. They’re distinctively Japanese and many of them are genuine works of art.

They come in thousands of designs, some brightly coloured. Cities and towns across the country use them to highlight aspects of their life and culture. Unique symbols of local pride, they have become popular attractions in their own right.

The practice is said to have begun in a small way in the 1950s with simple, geometric designs. It took off in the 1980s when local officials saw it as a novel way of winning public support for costly new sewer projects.

The Japanese word for manhole, adapted from English, is manhoru. In English, though, many now feel manhole is a sexist term. Let’s call them maintenance holes instead. It’s perhaps the most widely used of the alternative terms that have emerged in recent years.

In Japan as in other countries, the covers provide access to sewers, storm drains, water supplies, electricity and other utilities.

Many visitors delight in watching out for and photographing decorated maintenance hole covers in their travels around Japan. A name has been coined for this hobby: drainspotting.

The covers may feature a local landmark, a popular event, a bird or flower from the area, a sports team or a local mascot. A lasting memory of a day trip to Karuizawa, a mountain resort northwest of Tokyo, was finding a cover portraying the active volcano Mount Asama, at the foot of which the town lies.

Cute mascots are highly popular in Japan and many cities and regions have their own as can be seen in this listing of 50 of Japan’s best manhole covers.

Cartoon characters are a popular theme on the covers too. A growing number of towns, for instance, are installing Pokemon-themed covers to promote tourism. Some of them are one-offs that drainspotters won’t find anywhere else. Keep a look out for Hello Kitty covers too.

Some municipalities ask the public to come up with ideas for maintenance hole covers or hold competitions for new designs.

A few years ago a consortium of local governments and sewerage departments dreamed up the idea of giving away collectors’ cards devoted to maintenance hole covers. The cards feature a photo of a cover, an explanation of its design and its geographic coordinates should a fan wish to visit it.

There are websites where enthusiasts post thousands of photos of covers, including one run by the fan-operated Japanese Society of Manhole Covers.

Department stores have even held festivals devoted to these covers. In pre-pandemic times, two of Tokyo’s best-known stores, Takashimaya and Tokyu Hands, both held festivals in 2019.

Customers could buy a range of maintenance hole cover merchandise including pens, stickers, doormats, cookies and even jam-filled pancakes designed as covers. 

Even if you don’t consider yourself an avid drainspotter, it’s fun to come across colourful examples at random in your travels around Japan.

After I visited the superb Osaka Castle one fine October morning, it was a delight to find a cover on a nearby sidewalk depicting the castle in pastel shades of green and blue. It was the icing on the cake.

If your interest in these artistic covers makes you want to know a little more about what lies beneath, Tokyo has an unusual museum devoted to just this.

Called the Rainbow Tokyo Sewerage Museum, it’s run by the city’s Bureau of Sewerage. You can find it on the 5th floor of the Ariake Sports Center near the northwestern part of Tokyo Bay.

Admission to this quirky museum is free. You can explore simulated underground pipes, have a go at operating sewerage pumps and learn about the science behind Japan’s sewerage systems – all without getting your feet dirty.

Header image: © dekitateyo