is a set of waterfalls near downtown

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, with an important significance in

Japanese literature Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanes ...

and

Japanese art Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ''ukiyo-e'' paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga and anime. It ...

. In Japan, Nunobiki is considered one of the greatest "divine falls" together with

Kegon Falls is located at Lake Chūzenji (source of the Oshiri River) in Nikkō National Park near the city of Nikkō, Tochigi, Nikkō, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. The falls were formed when the Daiya River was rerouted by lava flows. The main falls had a h ...

and Nachi Falls. Nunobiki waterfalls comprises four separate falls: Ontaki, Mentaki, Tsutsumigadaki, and Meotodaki.

''Tales of Ise''

A well-known section of the ''

Tales of Ise is a Japanese '' uta monogatari'', or collection of ''waka'' poems and associated narratives, dating from the Heian period. The current version collects 125 sections, with each combining poems and prose, giving a total of 209 poems in most version ...

'' (') describes a trip taken by a minor official and his guests to Nunobiki Falls. They begin a poetry-writing contest, to which one of the guests, a commander of the guards, contributes:

Which, I wonder, is higher- This waterfall or the fall of my tears As I wait in vain, Hoping today or tomorrow To rise in the world.

The minor official offers his own composition:

It looks as though someone Must be unstringing Those clear cascading gems. Alas! My sleeves are too narrow To hold them all.Translation by Helen McCullough, quoted in Morse, 42.

Notes

References

* ''Art & Artifice: Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era – Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston'', with essays by Sebastian Dobson, Anne Nishimura Morse, and Frederic A. Sharf (Boston: MFA Publications, 2004), 42.
Hometown Homepage; 'Nunobiki Waterfalls, an Oasis in the City'
Accessed 11 April 2006. * Morse, Anne Nishimura. 'Souvenirs of "Old Japan": Meiji-Era Photography and the Meisho Tradition'. In ''Art & Artifice: Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era – Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston'' (Boston: MFA Publications, 2004).
The New York Public Library, s.v. "Nunobiki"
Accessed 11 April 2006. * David Farrah, Michio Nakano, ''The Poems of Nunobiki Falls'' (『布引の滝のうた詩歌・和歌・俳句』), Shinbisha (審美社), November 1998, in Japanese charters, Roma-ji (Romanized form), and their English translations,

Tales

These are tales about the falls collected by Kobe City: *

' *

' *

' *

' {{coord, 34, 42, 35, N, 135, 11, 38, E, region:JP-28, display=title Waterfalls of Japan Geography of Kobe Japanese literature Tourist attractions in Kobe Landforms of Hyōgo Prefecture

''Tales of Ise''

Notes

References

External links

Tales