Japan's Onsen Towns: Hakone, Beppu, and Kinosaki

The Japanese word yu refers to hot water — specifically to the hot water of a thermal spring — and the bathing culture built around it has been woven into Japanese life since at least the 8th century, when Buddhist monks began constructing bathhouses at volcanic springs for the purification of pilgrims. Today Japan has over 3,000 officially designated onsen towns (onsen-chi), each sitting above a volcanic heat source and each maintaining its own tradition of inn-keeping, bathing protocol and therapeutic mineral character. The variety is enormous: sulphurous springs, iron-rich springs, alkaline springs, milky springs, springs that smell of the deep earth and springs that are nearly colourless. All share the essential Japanese logic that bathing is not hygiene alone but restoration — of the body, the spirit and the relationship between the two.

The vocabulary of the onsen inn, the ryokan, is inseparable from the vocabulary of the springs: the best onsen ryokan are built around their baths, and the architecture of indoor and outdoor bathing, the quality of the mineral water, the sequence of bathing and feasting and sleeping and bathing again — this is a complete culture of physical renewal that has no equivalent in the Western world. Three towns in particular represent its range: Hakone, an hour from Tokyo, accessible and internationally famous; Beppu, in Kyushu, volcanic and extravagant; and Kinosaki, on the Japan Sea coast, intimate and perfectly preserved.

The logic of the onsen: what Japanese bathing means

To understand the onsen is to understand that the Japanese bath is communal, unhurried and entirely separated from the concept of a quick shower. The procedure is invariable: you enter the bathing area, wash thoroughly at a low wooden stool using the hand shower and soap provided, rinse completely, and then enter the bath proper — which may be as hot as 42 or 43 degrees Celsius — for a soak that lasts as long as the body can comfortably sustain it. There is no talking above a murmur. There are no phones. The baths are almost always separated by sex. The outdoor bath (rotenburo), open to sky and garden, is the form that most powerfully expresses the Japanese ideal of nature and culture in balance.

The mineral composition of the water is taken seriously — each onsen type is classified by its chemistry, and the therapeutic properties of sulphur, iron, sodium bicarbonate, radium and other minerals are understood with the same specificity that a wine enthusiast brings to terroir. Hotels and ryokan post the water analysis for their baths; regular visitors develop loyalties to specific springs the way wine lovers develop loyalties to specific producers. The physical effect of a long soak in properly heated spring water is real and measurable: blood vessels dilate, muscles relax, sleep comes early and deep, and the face that looks back from the bathroom mirror the following morning is visibly different from the one that arrived.

Hakone: the classical gateway

Hakone sits in a volcanic caldera about 80 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, in the mountains of Kanagawa Prefecture. Its thermal springs were first developed in the 8th century; by the Edo period (1603–1868), it had become one of the most popular destinations in Japan for wealthy Tokyoites seeking relief from the city's summer heat. Today it remains Japan's most visited onsen destination, and it wears the visitor numbers with a grace that reflects the deep infrastructure of Japanese hospitality: even at peak season, the best ryokan are quiet, the baths are never crowded if you time them for the early morning, and the view of Mount Fuji from an outdoor bath above the caldera lake of Ashi — on a clear day, and they are more common than the tourist-brochure hedging suggests — is one of the iconic views of Japan.

Hakone Open-Air Museum, the finest outdoor sculpture garden in Japan, occupies a hillside above the Hayakawa Valley with works by Rodin, Picasso, Henry Moore and a substantial permanent Picasso gallery inside a glass pavilion. The Hakone Tozan railway, a rack-and-pinion mountain line that switchbacks up the valley in autumn through tunnels of maple and zelkova turning every shade of red and gold, is one of the most enjoyable short train journeys in Japan. The route from Tokyo to Hakone, followed by a circuit of the caldera by cable car, ropeway and pleasure boat before return by the Tokaido Shinkansen, is a masterclass in Japanese infrastructure used as tourism.

Beppu: the volcanic city

Beppu, on the northeast coast of Kyushu, is the most extravagant onsen town in Japan: its seafront steams visibly, columns of vapour rising from hundreds of vents and drains all over the city, and its output of hot spring water is the highest in Japan and among the highest in the world. The city's eight famous 'hells' (jigoku) are thermal pools of extraordinary colour and turbulence — pools of vivid cobalt blue (Umi Jigoku), blood red (Chinoike Jigoku, or 'Blood Pond Hell'), boiling grey mud (Oniyama Jigoku) and a pool that spouts a geyser every thirty minutes (Tatsumaki Jigoku) — most too hot to bathe in, all spectacular to visit.

Beppu's bathing culture is more democratic and more extrovert than Hakone's. The public baths here, many of them run by the city, charge a few hundred yen for entry and are used daily by local residents alongside tourists. The distinctive Beppu specialty is the sand bath (sunayu): attendants bury you up to the neck in naturally heated volcanic sand on the beach at Beppu, where the sand at about half a metre depth reaches 40–45 degrees Celsius — the result is a total-body thermal experience unlike any pool bath, and one that leaves the skin remarkably soft. The city also has a tradition of outdoor communal footbaths (ashiyu) throughout its streets, where anyone can sit and soak their feet in passing.

Kinosaki: the perfect onsen town

Kinosaki Onsen, on the coast of Hyogo Prefecture facing the Japan Sea, is what the classical Japanese onsen town looks like when it has survived unchanged. The town is built along a willow-lined canal that runs for about a kilometre through its centre, and along this canal are seven public bathhouses (sotoyu), each architecturally distinct and each with its own mineral character and its own deity of protection. The ritual of the town is precise and ancient: guests of a ryokan put on their yukata (light cotton kimono) and wooden geta sandals at dusk and walk the canal path from bath to bath, carrying their own small towel in a basket, sampling each house over the course of the evening.

The sound of Kinosaki at dusk — the clack of geta on stone, the hiss of steam from bath-house vents, the murmur of conversations in passing — is one of the most evocative sounds in Japan: a place that has found its exact form and sees no reason to change it. The town has been associated with one of the most beloved pieces of Japanese modern literature — Shiga Naoya's novella 'At Kinosaki' (1917), written during a recuperation in the town after a road accident — and the literary association has settled over the place like a layer of lacquer, deepening its atmosphere without changing its everyday character. The crabs from the Japan Sea, served at the ryokan table in November and December, are the finest in Japan.

The ryokan dinner and the art of kaiseki

An onsen ryokan without exceptional food is a contradiction in terms: the two experiences are inseparable in the Japanese tradition of konyoku — of immersion in and renewal by the complete environment of a place. Dinner at a traditional ryokan is almost always kaiseki, the multi-course Japanese feast that evolved from the tea ceremony's simple meal and developed over four centuries into one of the most refined culinary traditions in the world. Each course arrives on its own vessel, chosen to complement the food's colour and texture; the sequence moves from light to substantial and back again; each item reflects the season with an exactitude that is itself a form of teaching.

At Hakone, kaiseki dinners are built around Sagami Bay seafood and the mountain vegetables of Kanagawa. At Beppu, the regional speciality is Oita wagyu beef and the abundant seafood of the Bungo Channel. At Kinosaki, the winter crabs — Matsuba-gani, the local name for male snow crab — are the centrepiece of a dinner that may run for three hours and leave the diner in a state of tranquil satisfaction that the bath, earlier in the evening, already suggested was possible. This combination of mineral water and exceptional food, in a building of specific architecture, in a landscape of specific beauty, is what the onsen town has offered the Japanese traveller for a thousand years.

Practical matters: onsen etiquette and access

The cardinal rule of the onsen is to wash before you enter, always and thoroughly. Tattoos are banned from most public baths in Japan — a rule with origins in the association between tattoos and organised crime (yakuza), now reviewed at some progressive establishments but still strictly enforced at many traditional ones. Visitors with tattoos should research their specific destination in advance; some onsen offer private family baths (kashikiri) that can be booked by the hour and used regardless of tattoo status. Children are welcome at most baths, accompanied by an adult of the same sex.

Hakone is accessible from Tokyo in about 85 minutes by the Romancecar express from Shinjuku station (no seat reservation service required, but advisable for weekends). Kinosaki is about 2.5 hours from Osaka by limited express on the San'in Main Line — a journey that itself traverses some of the most beautiful rural landscape in the Kansai region. Beppu is reached by air (40 minutes from Tokyo Haneda to Oita Airport, then 30 minutes by bus) or by overnight ferry from Osaka. Our journeys in Japan include onsen stays as a structural element of the itinerary, because no understanding of Japan is complete without the experience of its bathing culture.