Japanese manhole covers are painted with flowers, bridges, mountains and mascots -- and now they're for sale

By Martyn Smith, Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of Sheffield

Visitors to Japan are usually primed to look up – at the vast skyscrapers, the ornate temple gates, the traditional timber-framed guesthouses. Those who look down at their feet, though, might have noticed something equally intriguing on the ground. Ornate manhole covers in wrought iron, often plain, sometimes brightly painted, dot the country’s pavements, separating street life from the sewers that run below.

These objects have garnered a considerable following of “manholers” (as the hobbyists are known), who will be delighted to learn that city officials in Kyoto and other local authorities…

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