Kusari Rain Thread - toi: Making Japan's Own Rain

The rains in the land of cherry blossoms are decorated by the Japanese in their own way with Kusari - toi rain threads, thanks to which the rains in Japan become more gentle and romantic.

What is rain thread?

If you have the opportunity to travel to Japan during the rainy season, you will occasionally see long strings of thread swaying in front of the roofs of traditional houses or Shinto shrines. When it rains, if you stop for a moment, you will hear the pleasant sound of water flowing through these strings. Their name is also very interesting - rain threads.

Rain thread in Japan.

It is a long string of fibers, attached to the gutter in front of the house, the main function is to conduct water and store water. In Japanese, rain thread is written as 鎖樋, transcribed as "kusari - toi" or "kusari - doi" , translated into English as "rain chain", "chain gutter" and in Vietnamese it is called "rain thread".

Birth and development

Rain threads first appeared in the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1558-1600), when a unique architectural style for tea rooms (a place for enjoying tea) called Sukiyazukuri was born. The leaders of the tea ceremony decided to choose a rustic aesthetic for tea room architecture rather than a splendid beauty, so the rain threads used to hang from the bamboo or wooden gutters outside the tea rooms were made only from the outer bark of the hemp plant, woven into threads, called Shuro-nawa.

Raindrops make the sound of running water.

Shuro-nawa functioned similarly to modern water pipes , but the difference was that while the drain pipes concealed the water flow inside, these rain threads provided visual pleasure to the viewer as they could see the water flowing from the roof to the ground clearly. The traditional Shuro-nawa is still used today next to the entrance of the Hachiroemon Mitsui House, built by the 11th generation head of the family, Takakimi Mitsui, which was later relocated to the Edo-Tokyo Tatemono En Museum (Koganei Park, Tokyo).

Rain yarn types.

As time passed, along with the development of technology, bamboo or wooden gutters were gradually replaced by metal materials, metal rain fibers also became more and more popular and the type with a cup-shaped base gradually became popular thanks to better rainwater drainage.

Originally a decorative item designed specifically for traditional Japanese homes, about half a century ago, rain yarn began to be incorporated into modern Western architecture. The number of traditional homes using rain yarn is decreasing, instead rain yarn is gradually appearing more and more in modern architecture with diverse and rich designs.

Aesthetic beauty and vivid sound effects

Instead of using large and bulky pipes to carry water as usual, the Japanese minimize water-carrying devices to make them compact, convenient, economical and highly aesthetic.

Rain threads are now used more for home decoration than for water storage , with long or short chains, including or without a water tank underneath. The rich design of rain threads, from simple to complex, not only makes the choice and architectural decoration much more interesting, but also creates opportunities for homeowners to express their own style.

Rain thread image.

The installation of rain threads is also extremely simple, all you need to do is fix the thread chain on the gutter with a separate hook and you can use it immediately. Thanks to these advantages, rain threads are loved by many people and are increasingly popular in countries around the world.

At Japanese Shinto shrines, we often see strings of rain hanging from the roof, swaying when the wind blows. When the raindrops fall, in the quiet sacred space of the shrine, looking at the strings of rain and listening to the sound of water flowing through each string, then falling into the water basin, suddenly feels like all the worries are washed away with the water.