Cobalt water welling up beneath a shrine, an old man who appeared in a dream, and stones that turn red under the surface… At Beppu Benten Pond, geology makes the colour and Benzaiten collects the thanks.
The Beppu without the steam
Forget the scalding baths and smoking hells of the famous Beppu on Kyūshū. This Beppu sits in Yamaguchi prefecture, about fifteen minutes from Akiyoshidai. Among the trees of Beppu Itsukushima-jinja, one small pocket of turquoise water is enough to stop the walk.
The pond runs about forty metres around and reaches some four metres deep. Yet the stones stay visible all the way to the bottom. You can see everything, and the water still keeps a strange air of the abyss.
Four metres of blue and a goddess
The water comes from Mount Hanao to the north-west, travels underground, then rises again along a fault. The whole region rests on an old coral reef born in a tropical sea more than 300 million years ago, now the limestone landscape of Akiyoshidai. The blue has travelled a long way before landing under this torii. The spring pushes out close to 168 litres per second and stays around 14 °C all year. Its clarity lets light reach deep; the red wavelengths are absorbed more, and blue ends up winning. Depending on the sun, the pond shifts from water-green to electric cobalt. No pigment, no lighting: just very pure water that knows exactly how to take the light. Listed among Japan’s Hundred Remarkable Waters in 1985, the spring still supplies the village. You can drink it at a fitted tap, but you cannot dip hands or feet in the pond. The postcard is also a drinking-water reserve.
The local legend goes back to the Nara period. A wealthy landowner named Iida Iwami-no-kami wanted to clear the forest for new farmland. An old man appeared to him in a dream and told him how to go about it, with two sickles. When he woke, the tools were waiting beside him. The land was cleared, but no watercourse ran through it. A second oracle advised him to bring in Benzaiten, the goddess of water, music and fortune. A small shrine was built, prayers and dances were offered. That night, the water began to flow.
The shrine is now called Itsukushima-jinja, but everyone still says Benten-sama. Every September a nenbutsu odori is still performed to thank the spring and ask for good harvests. Flowered headdresses, drums, dancers and a Buddhist invocation, all inside the grounds of a Shintō shrine. At Beppu, even the religions go with the flow.
Red under the blue
In places the bottom turns rust-coloured, almost bloody. It is neither dead leaves nor naturally red stone, but benimadara, a rare freshwater red alga that clings to rocks in clean, shaded streams.
The contrast shows best where the water leaves the pond: blue in the middle, red along the edges, green all around. The pond already had one improbable colour; it was hiding a second one under the surface.
After the contemplation, the trout
The water then carries on toward the rice fields and the neighbouring fish farm. Its steady temperature suits rainbow trout perfectly, and you can catch one and have it cooked in one of the small restaurants nearby. There is even coffee made with Benten water, and a trout burger.
You come first to photograph a blue that looks unreal. You end up finding a spring that gives drink, irrigates, feeds, and still sets the village dancing. Geology explains the colour; the legend explains why, thirteen centuries later, people keep thanking it.
Two more quiet corners of Yamaguchi: Jinjo-ji, an ancient shrine lost in the mountains, and Unrin-ji and its carved cats. Practical details from the Mine tourism office ↗.
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