A white monkey saved an army here, or so the story goes. During the Sengoku era, troops under Yamagata Masakage — a vassal of Takeda Shingen campaigning into Hida — collapsed near this waterfall, worn down by the pass crossing and by sulfurous gas from Mount Io, until a white monkey led them to a hot spring that restored them: the legendary origin of Hirayu Onsen. The fall itself drops 64 meters in a 6-meter-wide band on the Otaki River, in the upper Takahara River system of the Jinzu watershed, at Hirayu in Takayama City's Okuhida hot-spring district. It appears both in Japan's Top 100 Waterfalls and among Gifu's 50 Famous Waters, and in deep winter it freezes solid.
Visiting Hirayu Great Falls
The fall stands at Hirayu in the Okuhida Onsengo hot-spring district of Takayama City, Gifu Prefecture. Autumn brings celebrated foliage — the Okuhida area is listed among the 33 famous foliage sites of Hida and Mino — and each February the frozen fall is illuminated for the Hirayu Otaki Ice Fall Festival.
