It’s said that waterfalls contain positive energy. You can cool down on a hot summer day just by standing near a waterfall.

Did you know that back in the Edo period people enjoyed summer not by going to the sea, but by going to a waterfall and taking in its beauty and refreshing powers?

Edo was built over an estuary, which made it difficult to secure clean drinking water as the wells were brackish. Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu had his vassal, Ōkubo Togoro, investigate the water supply to find a solution to their problem. They constructed a weir near the Ōtaki Bridge on the left side of the current Kabuki-mon and used it to create a network of canals. This is Japan's first urban water supply, called “Kanda Josui,” and the weir was called "Sekiguchi Ōarai Weir."

People would gather at the top of the weir to cool down in the summer as if they were visiting a grand waterfall, as the stream of rushing water made a loud noise and flowed into Edo River. A boathouse and tea house were also built there after the Meiji era, attracting more visitors.

Gojo Waterfall may be man-made, but its stream is as refreshing as that of the Ōarai Weir.