I recently had the idea that I would start to collect manholes, you know those usually round slabs of metal that cover drainage holes and what not in the street. Mind you, not collecting the actual things, but rather photographs of them (what else in a post-meta world?). You see I’ve started to notice that Japan has many variations on the theme and that each town or Tokyo district seems to have its own design for them.
I whip up these little photo collecting projects in part to keep myself motivated when taking pictures for my Japan photo diary. Now I’m on a manhole “kick.” Previously, I’ve been on a construction sign kick, a subway commuter kick. You get the idea, little diaries within the diary. I think it may in part be the otaku spirit of collecting rubbing off on me, spurred on it part by coming across web sites like this one (via Spitting Image).
At any rate, given the propensity I’ve come to find on the part of some Japanese to maniacally document (or collect) something to the nth degree, I figured there was surely someone out there who has already “collected” manholes and created a loving web site devoted to them. I asked a favor of my wife to do some Google Japan searches (in the end, it turns out I could’ve done this myself, as manholes are simply called “manhooru” in Japanese). Here, in no particular order, is what she found:
http://www6.airnet.ne.jp/manhole/
http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/people/kazz_y/manhole/
http://k-server.org/minakami/
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~zw2y-mtn/manhole/
http://www03.u-page.so-net.ne.jp/xb3/hiroa/manhole.html
http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/ro/gi11927/manhole/
http://www1.kcn.ne.jp/~giova21/tetuhuta/mantop/mantop.html
http://www.sunfield.ne.jp/~seiyu/hobby/manhole/
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~sa8k-fjkw/manholl/manholl_top.htm
This is just from the first couple of Google pages. Who knows how many of these sites lurk out there, nor what else they might contain? To wit, if you go to the homepage of the last URL listed above, you will also find his (it’s gotta be a he, no?) pages (all complete with photographs) on telegraph poles, public buses, fire hydrants, signboards, traffic signals, and mailboxes.
In the face of all this detritus washing up on the shores of the web, what’s a poor little newbie collector like me to do?
P.S. Lest one think that this manhole mania is exclusive to Japanese, herewith are some select non-Japanese sites:
http://www.roland-muehler.de/english/mh1_0.htm
http://www.franceview.com/regards/texte0gb.htm
http://www.danheller.com/manholes.html
Thanks for the post on manhole cover photos. Very interesting! I have always loved the Japanese propensity for instilling beauty into ordinary objects. After reading your post, I stopped to look at the manhole covers here in Austin, TX and they are very boring.
I’m still thinking about your remark of collecting in a post-meta world. My resident Mancunian collects adverts for those tacky commemorative plates. He has two large 3-ring binders organized by category (Thomas Kincaid “painter of light”, Harley-Davidson, Disney, wolves, fairies, etc. ). I guess it’s not much different than trainspotting.
“I have always loved the Japanese propensity for instilling beauty into ordinary objects.”
M Sinclair, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Although thinking about it, I wonder how much is “instilling” and how much is simply seeing what others may not see (or choose to see). As I was thinking about this subject, I realized that I have absolutely no clue what the manholes look like in San Francisco, the city I moved here from and where I lived for 14 years. Now very likely they’re like Austin’s and boring, but I never ever bothered to consider them.