A brief history of rain chains
Kusari-doi: four centuries on Japanese temples and homes, then one Winter Olympics that introduced them to the world.
Long before gutters-and-downspouts became the standard way to move water off a roof, Japan had already solved the problem — beautifully. The solution was a chain.
Four hundred years of kusari-doi
In Japan they're called kusari-doi — literally "chain gutter" — and they've hung from temples and homes for hundreds of years. A series of hollow cups or stylized links guides rainwater down from the roof edge in a visible, audible stream. What's remarkable is that they were never a compromise: kusari-doi were considered functional and beautiful at once, a piece of the architecture rather than plumbing bolted onto it. That's still the whole idea.
Nagano, 1998
Rain chains stayed a largely Japanese tradition until the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano put them in front of a global audience. Since then their popularity outside Japan has grown steadily — nowhere more than in the United States, where homeowners, landscapers, garden designers, and builders have adopted them both for how they look and for what they do. They've also found a natural role in water reclamation, feeding rain barrels and cisterns as the visible front end of a catchment system.
Where we come in
Rain Chains Direct has been part of that American chapter since 2003 — selling high-quality, honestly made chains at reasonable prices, direct. Along the way our products have been featured on HGTV and the Discovery Channel, and our chains hang on homes in every state. Four centuries of good design; we're glad to be the ones handing it to you.