Beniya Mukayu

Beniya Mukayu is a ryokan on a hill above Yamashiro Onsen, a hot-spring town in Kaga, about forty minutes from Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. It was founded in 1928, has sixteen rooms, each with its own open-air hot-spring bath facing the garden, and holds one Michelin Key.

Mukayu is usually translated as richness in emptiness.

A family inn rebuilt around a garden

People have bathed in the springs of Yamashiro for at least 1,300 years. The Nakamichi family runs Beniya Mukayu, and the present owner is the third generation; the couple took it over about thirty years ago, and the inn's architect is Sey Takeyama. The building plays light against shade in a neutral palette, with a lobby floor of local diatomaceous earth and an entrance planned for komorebi, the light that falls through leaves. The garden is of moss and pines some three hundred years old, and Mrs Nakamichi has spent two decades cataloguing its plants in an illustrated moss map left in every room.

Three libraries recall the monks who once studied scripture on the site: one of art, design and local craft, one of the plants of the forest, and Library Zero, with work by Tatsuo Miyajima and Takeyama himself. Outside the spa, a round black pool is a work by the designer Kenya Hara.

Kaga kaiseki and tea

Dinner at Horin is a kaiseki of Kaga produce served on locally made ceramics, changing with the season and the day. The owners serve tea to their guests themselves, preparing matcha and explaining the objects of the ceremony, and the inn arranges afternoons with local makers of tea spoons, wagashi, porcelain and woodwork, as well as walks among the plants of the hills. Spa Entei offers treatments drawn on the medicinal tradition of the springs.

Children under seven are not accepted. The crafts of the region, from Kutani porcelain to Kanazawa's gold leaf, are covered in OKYTO's guide to Kanazawa's crafts and gardens.

Sources: Michelin Guide; Relais & Châteaux.