LISTEN
Sakai, Osaka, Japan / Recorded in December 2005
Suikinkutsu recording
A 32-second recording captures water resonating inside a suikinkutsu at a tea house in Daisen Park. The sound comes from drops falling through a small opening into a buried ceramic chamber.
The instrument is mostly hidden. A visitor sees a garden basin and hears clear, bell-like droplets whose resonating chamber sits beneath the ground.
A CLOSER LOOK
A suikinkutsu combines garden drainage with an acoustic chamber. Water passes downward through gravel and an opening in an upside-down buried pot. Drops strike a small pool inside, and the enclosed ceramic space reinforces the resulting sound before it travels back toward the surface.
Wikimedia Commons describes this recording as coming from a tea house in Daisen Park in Sakai, Osaka. The file runs for 32 seconds and credits Komura Jutaro as recorder. Torsodog created the edited derivative from Shizhao’s Waterharpsound.ogg, removing a short section containing a distracting crow call.
The recording isolates a sound that depends on several physical details: drop timing, the amount of water inside the vessel, the pot’s shape, and the path by which sound escapes. It documents one installation at one moment; it should not be treated as a universal reference for every suikinkutsu.
The Commons page contains conflicting December 2005 day dates in its English and Japanese descriptions, so this page does not choose between them. Commons publishes the edited audio under CC BY-SA 3.0 and the GNU Free Documentation License. The generated cutaway explains the cataloged mechanism and is not a photograph, construction plan, or record of the Daisen Park installation.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
Wikimedia CommonsSuikinkutsu recording.oggOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.