Banyan Tree Higashiyama Kyoto Opens With a Noh Stage and an Onsen

Banyan Tree Higashiyama Kyoto opened in August 2024 on a wooded hillside in the Higashiyama district, a short walk from Kiyomizu-dera. It is the first hotel in Japan to carry the Banyan Tree name, the flagship brand of the Singapore-based Banyan Group, and it has 52 rooms.

The hotel was designed by Kengo Kuma, with interiors by Yukio Hashimoto. Its low timber buildings are set against a bamboo grove, and at their centre is something no other hotel in Kyoto possesses: a Noh stage, built in the open air in cypress wood with the forest as its backdrop, where performances of Japan’s oldest form of theatre are given for guests. The hotel arranges visits to the workshop of a maker of Noh masks, and private sessions of kōdō, the ceremony of appreciating incense, at Sennyu-ji temple.

The second distinction is underground. The hotel has a natural hot spring, drawn from beneath the site, which feeds separate public baths for men and women. The rooms known as Onsen Retreats have their own hot-spring bath looking onto the garden or the bamboo; others have deep tubs of hiba, a fragrant cypress. All have tatami and are furnished in pale wood.

Ryozen, the restaurant, is named after the hill on which the hotel stands. It serves kaiseki in the kappo style, with the chef cooking at a counter in front of the guests, and the adjoining bar lists more than thirty sakes and a selection of Japanese whisky. The spa combines Banyan Tree’s own treatments with Japanese techniques.

The site lies on the slope between Kiyomizu-dera and Kodai-ji, among lanes of old wooden houses that are crowded by day and almost empty after dark. A hotel here lets its guests see the district early in the morning and in the evening, which is the only way to see it properly.

The opening came four months after Six Senses Kyoto, developed by the same Japanese owner, and close to Park Hyatt Kyoto. Kengo Kuma returned to the city for Capella Kyoto in 2026.