Japan’s Majestic Manhole Covers Trigger Collection Craze

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Life is richer for the existence of people such as Myk Briggs, Nancy Hoffman and Niek Vermeulen, respective owners of the world’s largest collections of ear trumpets, umbrella covers and airline sickness bags. These are not the Gettys, Guggenheims or Nahmads of great art. But they are all points on the same glorious graph.

Forget Marie Kondo’s decluttering and minimalist living that gripped so many during Covid. Little satisfies or showcases the human capacity for ambition, vision, love, and connoisseurship as much as a good collection.

The question is where on this spectrum to place Japan and its iron manhole covers. Many Japanese are from a young age encouraged to become ardent accumulators, and the country itself — the creator of Pokémon, Tomica, Hello Kitty, and other super-powered collection machines — keeps the supply side well stocked.

The national interest in manhole covers has grown through the same symbiotic relationship. Cities go to greater aesthetic trouble over them than budgetary and practical considerations would strictly require — as they do with roadside guardrails, benches, and many other bits of mundane urban architecture and infrastructure. In terms of water and sewage works alone, Tokyo boasts 487,805 covers and even the most workaday are embellished with cherry blossom or other designs.

The elaboration began more than 40 years ago when Japan vastly increased its sewage network. Over the past decade, the artistry has spectacularly escalated in tandem with the rapid mainstreaming of the hobby of manhole-spotting. Towns and cities around Japan now vie for ever more elaborately artistic and colorful covers.

Many depict local sites of historic or cultural significance, mascots, or famous locals. Others go for animals and points of natural beauty. Since 2015, towns in Japan have hosted a total of nine manhole summits featuring lectures and extensive exhibitions.

A more recent trend has been to merge manhole-spotting with existing targets of collector obsession. The cartoon characters Pokémon and Gundam are depicted on covers, and treasure hunts are invited. Visitors to Tokyo’s Chiyoda ward tourism center next to the Imperial Palace are given a collectible card that carries the precise longitude and latitude of a unique Astro Boy manhole cover near the Yasukuni shrine.

The real beauty in all this is in the covers themselves and the philosophy behind them. Japan has added to its ever greater national debt in the effort to convey the idea that when the cost-benefit analysis of an ornate cover is assessed, the benefit side of the equation is heavily weighted by a conviction that having one does some immense social good.

It may have a point. At one level, this conviction has helped spur the sociability and activity the hobby of collection generates. But at another, there is that subtle social reinforcement upon which Japan’s wider stability rests. The authorities wanted to encourage connection to the expanded sewage system; the bigger philosophy is that if you align government and people on appreciating the manhole covers, the rest will follow.

The culmination came this week when the city of Kyoto said it would sell vintage 1978, 1981, and 1990 covers that had reached the end of their working lives. They will go for ¥5,500 ($37) and if demand outstrips supply (which it inevitably will) the buyers will be chosen by lottery.

Suddenly, manhole-philia is encouraged to move from the purely visual to the physically acquisitive. The Myk Briggs and Guggenheims will soon be joined by builders of great Japanese manhole cover collections, their lovingly curated hoards inflated as other municipalities realize they can flog superannuated iron at a premium.

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