Wells (ido 井戸, lit. ‘well door’) belong to the category of man-made water infrastructure. Wells are essentially just holes dug in the ground that provide an opening or ‘door’ (to 戸) onto a source of groundwater, making it accessible from the surface. If necessary, the hole is reinforced with a lining, as represented pictorially by the kanji 井 (i ‘well’).

Wells have a long history in Japan: timbers determined to be the lining boards of large wells have been excavated from the ruins of Nara Period (Nara jidai 奈良時代, 710 - 794) temples. Common folk could not hope to have such large or deep wells at their houses, however; their wells, such as they were, might rather be thought of as ‘augmented springs’ intended to give a helping hand to naturally-occurring seeping sources of groundwater, by increasing or concentrating the volume of emerging water to make collecting it more practical. The picture below is an example of such a well, called a yoko-ido (横井戸 ‘horizontal well’) or yoko-ana-mizu (横穴水 ‘horizontal hole water’). Often these wells were dug into the bank or foot (suso 裾) of the mountain or hill behind the house, probably because digging sideways is easier than digging vertically down.

Long ago, ‘horizontal holes’ excavations made in banks until the mountain water emerged/seeped out. These old wells are of a type called *yoko-ana-mizu* (横穴水, ‘horizontal hole water’). Fukui Prefecture.

Even when vertical wells were dug, the excavation would be shallow, and made in a place where the water table was high enough that water seemed already about to emerge; such wells were called asa-ido (浅井戸 ‘shallow well’) or shaku-ido (杓井戸 ‘ladle well’). For the lucky few, there were also artesian wells (fuke-i 噴け井 ‘spouting well’), where underground water comes to the surface under its own pressure.

A shallow well called a *shaku-ido* (杓井戸 ‘ladle well’). To prevent leaves and other debris from falling into it, it has been covered with a roof made of naturally curved timbers clad with Japanese cedar (*sugi 杉*) bark. Saitama Prefecture.

As mentioned, the construction of a well required both technical ability and significant expense, so most wells were communal, built in the village ‘square’ (hiro-ba 広場, lit. ‘wide place’), like that shown below. These deep ‘dug wells’ (hori-ido 堀り井戸) used a tsurube (釣瓶, lit. ‘fishing bottle’), a bucket or other container attached to a rope, to draw water from the well, and so were called tsuru-i (釣る井 ‘fishing well’), among other names. The two wells in the photograph below are kuruma-ido (車井戸, ‘wheel well’); each uses a pulley wheel and chain to raise and lower twin buckets.

Two communal wells in the village square. The wells are *kuruma-ido* (車井戸 ‘wheel well’) that utilise pulley wheels. That there are two wells is probably explained by a division of use: one well for drinking water, the other for general purposes. Kyо̄to Prefecture.

There are also wells that employ as their lifting mechanism a hane-tsurube (跳ね鶴瓶, ‘jumping/bouncing bucket’), a counterbalanced structure somewhat like a yajiro-be-e (弥次郎兵衛) toy, with the bucket on a rope or pole at one end of the lever arm and a balance stone tied to the other.

A traditional balancing toy known as a *yajiro-be-e* (弥次郎兵衛).

A series of *hane-tsurube* used to flood rice fields from an irrigation canal (*yо̄suirо* 用水路, lit. ‘use water road’).

Both kuruma-ido and hane-tsurube well types allow one to use one’s body weight to pull down to lift the water bucket, which is much easier than pulling it up directly.

In the Meiji period (Meiji jidai 明治時代 1868 - 1912), the yashiki-ido (屋敷井戸, ‘villa well’), the private well for the individual use of a single family, previously limited to the houses of upper-strata farming families and temple residences, began to appear in the houses of commoners. In the preceding feudal era (hansei jidai 藩政時代), the amount of water allowed to commoners was extremely small, such that people were said to bathe only once a month, and tableware items would be put away in their box trays (hakozen 箱膳) without being washed; but with the abolition of the class system and its sumptuary laws in the Meiji period, the customs and habits of the upper classes gradually penetrated down to the masses. This change, together with advances in the understanding of hygiene, meant that the yashiki-ido and indoor well (uchi-ido 内井戸) spread rapidly.