Akakura Onsen was added to Your Favorites!
Myōkō-Togakushi Renzan NP, Niigata
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Villagers petitioned the Takada lord in 1814; 2 years later, a 6–7 km bamboo-and-wood conduit brought hot water to Akakura, where 2 communal baths opened. The engineering project cost over 3,120 ryō.
Akakura’s local bamboo-shoot soup pairs tender nemagari-take shoots with mackerel. In Myōkō, some cooks once used dried herring; canned mackerel spread inland in the 1950s, and the shoots are a fleeting early-summer treat.
Akakura’s wooden-pylon ski lift opened in 1950 as Japan’s first government-certified lift. The town began as a summer hot-spring retreat; as skiing caught on, slopes named for visiting princes helped draw winter guests.
Local histories describe Akakura as Japan’s only feudal-domain-operated hot-spring resort. Its inns paid the Takada Domain 15 ryō a year—a striking arrangement for a spa developed with both local initiative and domain backing.
In 1906, art thinker Okakura Tenshin bought a restaurant in Takada and had it moved to Akakura as his mountain villa. He returned to rest there and died in the house in 1913.
Akakura’s source springs emerge at 40–60°C. After flowing several kilometers downhill, water reaches inns at about 48°C and fills baths near 42°C—naturally cooled without reheating or cold-water dilution.
The source at Kita Jigokudani releases about 3,400 liters a minute—roughly 5,000 tons a day. That abundant flow lets Akakura’s inns keep baths supplied with fresh spring water.
Akakura’s old main street once had communal bathhouses standing right in the road. They remained there until the early Shōwa era, so the town’s broad street did double duty as a public bathing place.
Okakura Tenshin hoped to make Akakura an Asian Barbizon, like the French village associated with painters. He planned to bring the Japan Art Institute here and invited artists Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunsō; they liked Akakura but found it too far from Tokyo.
Founded in 1912, the Myōkō Club helped turn Akakura into an elite summer resort. Its fashionable pastimes included horseback riding, tennis, billiards—and even mahjong, then a modern novelty.
In 1899, popular novelist Ozaki Kōyō was forced to stop at Akakura when heavy rain disrupted his rail journey. He praised the scenery in his travelogue “Enka Ryōyō,” helping introduce the hot-spring town to readers nationwide.
Akakura takes its name from nearby Mt. Akakura, by Minami Jigokudani. But the onsen’s water comes from Kita Jigokudani to the north; in its early days, the settlement was also called Ippongi Onsen, or “One Tree.”
Akakura’s water can contain black or white “yunohana,” mineral solids that form as the hot water cools. Some inns let the mineral crust build up over years; others scrub it away, giving baths different signatures.
Akakura is the birthplace of the Onsen Sommelier certification. Created in 2002, it teaches hot-spring knowledge and good bathing practice—so spa staff can explain the water as thoughtfully as a wine sommelier describes a glass.
Akakura’s summer popularity once had a number attached: in 1916, it reportedly won a national summer-resort poll with 30,000 votes. Its cool climate and celebrity visitors helped make this mountain spa a fashionable escape.
