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River: 134 Live Cameras

Cameras the transport ministry keeps on Japan's major rivers. The water is usually calm — the value is in watching the same frame when heavy rain arrives.

Sample frame from Mammoth Cave National Park (September 2026)
Mammoth Cave National Park · Sample September 2026

What you can see

River cameras are flood-control equipment. Regional bureaus of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism run them on the major stretches of Japan's Class A rivers — the ones the national government manages directly. Each is aimed so that levees, bridge piers and floodgates appear in frame: not the prettiest angle, but the angle from which you can read the water level.

Which is why they are worth watching in ordinary weather. Once you know where the surface normally sits, opening the same camera during heavy rain tells you how far it has risen at a glance — faster than any number could.

Six of the regional bureaus — Hokkaido, Kanto, Hokuriku, Kansai, Shikoku and Kyushu — run their cameras as live video on YouTube rather than stills. Most cycle through several cameras so that one stream covers many points on a catchment. Shikoku is the exception: its streams hold a single spot, and some of them look straight at the outlet where a dam lets its water go. They are trial broadcasts and can stop without notice.

Cameras you can watch now: 134

122 video, 12 still. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

Hokkaido2

Tochigi1

Gunma2

Saitama3

Tokyo8

Niigata3

Toyama1

Ishikawa1

Fukui2

Yamanashi1

Mie1

Shiga1

Kyoto4

Hyogo4

Nara1

Wakayama2

Tottori9

Shimane9

Okayama9

Hiroshima9

Yamaguchi6

Tokushima4

Ehime3

Fukuoka4

Saga3

Nagasaki1

Kumamoto4

Oita3

Miyazaki3

Kagoshima2

United States16

Taiwan4

South Africa2

Kenya3

Osaka1

Ibaraki1

Chiba1

When to watch

June to October is flood season — the rainy front and the typhoons both land in that window, and that is when these cameras earn their keep. But when it is genuinely dangerous, do not watch a camera: follow the evacuation guidance from your local authority. This site is a directory, not a disaster information source.

Other seasons have their own interest. Snowmelt in early spring raises some rivers; the dry winter months expose wide gravel bars on others. On the Chikugo, which empties into the Ariake Sea, the tide reaches so far upstream that the lower river reverses direction twice a day.

Daylight only. Most river cameras carry no lighting, so after sunset the frame is simply black.

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Agencies publishing the cameras on this page

The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.

To find other cameras, go to the camera list. You can narrow the cameras by format, region, subject and provider.