Demizu Stream

Thin brook just five centimeters deep and 110 meters long, drawing from the Mikawa-mizu network of streams around the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Its pebble bed matches the footpaths in the palace gardens, and groundwater filtered from a nearby well keeps it moving. A poem in the tenth-century Kokin wakashu describes cherry blossom petals falling into an earlier version of this stream and turning to foam as they drift past, capturing how deeply people of that era paid attention to water and light in the palace gardens. Watching the current here still invites that same kind of attention.