Forty-eight waterfalls that are not really forty-eight, a god riding an ox with red eyes, ninjas, and an amphibian that smells of pepper… At Akame, the forest streams as much as it tells stories.
Forty-eight, really?
In western Mie prefecture, close to the Nara border, the Akame waterfalls cut deep into the mountains of Nabari. A trail of about four kilometres climbs the gorge alongside water that turns black or turquoise depending on the light. Moss-covered rocks, ferns, bridges, damp stairways: here you walk through every shade of green there is.
The name promises forty-eight waterfalls, but you should give up on counting them. In Japanese tradition, the number 48 can simply mean “a great many”. Another reading ties it to the forty-eight vows made by the bodhisattva Hōzō before becoming Amida Buddha. The falls were indeed given Buddhist names, and the whole gorge was imagined as an immense natural mandala. At Akame, even the arithmetic turns spiritual.
An ox sees red
Akame literally means “red eye”. Legend has it that the ascetic En no Ozunu was meditating near the falls when Fudō Myōō appeared to him riding an ox with red eyes. The place is said to have kept the memory of that vision. En no Ozunu is considered the legendary founder of shugendō, an ascetic tradition in which the mountain becomes a proving ground. Walking, fasting, meditating, enduring the cold or standing under a waterfall worked the body as much as the mind. Akame was a place of practice long before it became a marked trail.
At the mouth of the gorge, Enjuin temple still holds an Akame Fudōson. Further up, the names carry the story on: Fudō, Dainichi, Gyōja, Senju… Buddhism trickles down from one waterfall to the next.
Five headliners, not a straight line among them
Among all the falls, five make up the Akame Gobaku, the “five great waterfalls”: Fudō, Senju, Nunobiki, Ninai and Biwa. Each has its own movement. Senju splits across the rock like the thousand arms of Kannon. Nunobiki drops thirty metres in a thin white ribbon into a pool almost as deep. Ninai parts around a central boulder, its two columns of water recalling the baskets carried at either end of a shoulder pole. Biwa owes its name to its silhouette, compared to that of the Japanese lute.
The rock comes from an old volcanic landscape, fractured into columns in places. Water did the rest: it followed the faults, carved potholes, polished the walls and filled the pools. Akame looks like a forest, but its real architect runs down the middle. Until the middle of the Meiji era, the Fudō waterfall marked more or less the end of the accessible world. Beyond it began a deep forest nobody ventured into. Today’s trail has made it walkable, just enough to move forward without ever forgetting that the gorge remains in charge.
Ninjas under the moss
Akame once belonged to Iga province. Tradition says that Momochi Sandayū, one of the great figures associated with the Iga ninja, used these mountains as training ground. His former residence is said to stand only a few kilometres from the gorge. You need no smoke bombs or spectacular vanishings to understand the appeal of the place. Slippery rocks, steep slopes, cold water and paths drowned in shade already make a solid programme: balance, endurance, climbing, orientation and moving without a sound.
Today Akame happily claims that heritage, with costume experiences and beginner courses. But the best ninja setting is still free: a shaft of light, a rustle of leaves, then nothing at all.
A monster that smells of pepper
Under the stones lives a more discreet resident: the ōsanshōuo, the Japanese giant salamander. This huge amphibian, listed as a Special Natural Monument, finds an ideal refuge in Akame’s cool, clean water. You can sometimes spot one in the river from spring to autumn, with a lot of luck and a little patience.
Its name means “salamander fish”. It is said to refer to the smell, reminiscent of Japanese sanshō pepper, that the animal can give off when it feels threatened. A prehistoric creature, hidden under a rock and mildly spiced: Akame takes good care of its supporting cast. The smaller animals show themselves more readily. A lizard crosses the path, disappears into the ferns, and the forest goes still again. To see the giant salamander up close, your entry ticket also covers the little Akame aquarium, renovated in 2024.
How many waterfalls again?
At Akame you move at the pace of the water. It falls, splits, vanishes under the rocks, then returns a few metres further on. The light does the same: a clearing lights up, a pool turns green, the trail dips back into shadow.
You came to see a series of waterfalls. You end up following a sound, hunting for an amphibian under the stones, and imagining ascetics or ninjas behind every trunk. On the way out, there is no telling how many falls you passed. So it really was forty-eight.
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