Live camera
Kuma River live camera — Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto
One of Japan's three fastest rivers. It drops hard through a narrow valley, so the level climbs quickly after rain.
Sample August 2026Watch it here
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Nothing is requested from YouTube until you press it. What plays is the operator's own stream; this site neither records nor rebroadcasts it.
What you are looking at
It is called rapid not because the drop is great but because there is no width to let the water spread. From around Hitoyoshi downstream it is a narrow valley squeezed between mountains, and rain that fell upstream gathers into that single valley and comes down at once. So for the same amount of rain, the level rises faster here than elsewhere. In the heavy rain of July 2020 this basin suffered severe damage.
On a calm day the speed of the water is itself the thing, and the white streaks standing around the rocks tell you how strong the current is. In winter the flow drops and the bed stones show broadly.
The source is Mount Choshigasa in Mizukami, Kuma, at 1,489 metres. Taking in the Kawabe and others, it runs west through the Hitoyoshi and Kuma basin, then turns north to thread a narrow stretch among the mountains and reaches the Yatsushiro Sea across the Yatsushiro plain. It runs 115 kilometres over 1,880 square kilometres. It crosses Kumamoto, Miyazaki and Kagoshima, but only about 130,000 people live in it, few for the area.
This basin sits in the middle of Kyushu, country of heavy rain where both the rainy-season front and typhoons turn into downpours. Since the flood of 1965 it has been struck again and again, and inundation damage is recorded every few years from the 1980s into the 2010s. Being a rapid river and a wet one at once, this is a river to judge by the speed of the level rather than the rainfall figure.
Rain upstream takes time to arrive, so the level can climb while the picture stays calm. Leave evacuation decisions to the local authorities.
About this camera
| Place | Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto |
| Format | Live video, rotating |
| Time zone | Asia/Tokyo (UTC+9) |
| Category | River |
| Operator | MLIT river live streams |
| Terms of use | Government Standard Terms 2.0 |
The operator's own 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.
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