Six Onsen Towns That Show the Range of Japan’s Hot-Spring Culture

Japanese law defines an onsen precisely. Under the Hot Springs Act the water must come out of the ground at 25 degrees or more, or contain a stated quantity of certain minerals. By that measure the country has about 25,000 sources, and some 3,000 establishments where the public may bathe. People have used them for at least 1,300 years, first in connection with Buddhist temples and the healing of emperors.

A modern hotel with a hot bath on the roof meets the definition. An onsen town is something else: a place that exists because of its water, with inns, public bathhouses, a shrine to the spring and streets made for walking in a cotton robe. These six show the variety.

Kusatsu, Gunma

Kusatsu, in the mountains north-west of Tokyo, is regularly voted the best onsen in Japan by the Japanese. Its water is strongly acidic and very hot, and it wells up in the middle of the town in a steaming field of wooden channels called the Yubatake. The water is too hot to enter, so by tradition it is cooled by stirring with long paddles to a work song, a performance now given for visitors. Around the field are free public baths and old inns.

Beppu, Oita

Beppu, on the coast of Kyushu, produces more hot water than any other resort in the country. Steam rises from vents all over the city. It is known for the Hells, a set of pools too hot for bathing, coloured cobalt blue, blood red and milky white by their minerals. It also offers the widest choice of ways to bathe: in water, in hot sand on the beach, in mud and in steam.

Dogo, Ehime

Dogo, in the city of Matsuyama on Shikoku, claims to be the oldest hot spring in Japan and appears in the earliest chronicles. Its centre is the Dogo Onsen Honkan, a three-storey wooden bathhouse of 1894 with a drum tower, a special bath reserved for the imperial family and rooms upstairs where bathers take tea. It is still the town’s public bath.

Arima, Hyogo

Arima lies in the hills behind Kobe, half an hour from that city and under an hour from Osaka. It is small and steep. It has two kinds of water, the gold, which is brown with iron and salt, and the silver, which is clear and contains radium and carbonate. Each has its own public bathhouse.

Ginzan, Yamagata

Ginzan, the silver mine, is a single street in a narrow valley in the north. Wooden inns of three and four storeys, built about a century ago, line both banks of a stream crossed by small bridges, and gas lamps are lit at dusk. In winter the snow lies deep. It is the most photographed onsen in Japan and has few rooms, which must be booked many months ahead.

Kinosaki, Hyogo

Kinosaki, near the Sea of Japan, is built for strolling. Guests leave their inns in robe and wooden sandals and visit seven public bathhouses in turn along a willow-lined canal; our guide to bath-hopping in Kinosaki gives the details. It is the easiest of the six for a first visit, two and a half hours from Kyoto by direct train.

How to bathe

The rules are the same everywhere. Undress completely in the changing room. Sit at a tap and wash and rinse thoroughly before entering the bath. The small towel may be carried to the bath but must not touch the water, and is usually folded on the head. Swimwear is not worn. Men and women bathe separately, except in private baths that can be reserved by a couple or family. Many bathhouses still refuse people with tattoos, though this is changing, and private baths avoid the problem.

Baths are of three kinds: indoor, outdoor, called rotenburo, and foot baths in the street, which are free. The old custom of toji, a stay of a week or more for the sake of health, survives in simple inns, mainly in the north.

Japan intends to nominate this culture for UNESCO’s heritage list, as described in our article on the onsen bid. Since 2024 the Hokuriku Shinkansen has brought the spa towns of Kaga within easy reach of Tokyo. For an equivalent tradition elsewhere, see our guide to Taiwan’s hot springs.