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San'in Kaigan NP, Hyogo
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Kinosaki has 2 origin legends: an injured stork supposedly healed at Kōno-yu, while monk Dōchi is said to have prayed for 1,000 days before a spring appeared at Mandara-yu. Each tale lives on in a bathhouse name.
A blue tag on Tsuiyama Matsuba crab tells you where it was landed—not its grade. The nearby port’s crab can be caught and brought ashore in a day, so the little tag carries both provenance and local pride.
About 300 years ago, a visitor from Inshu (today’s Tottori) dyed barley straw and decorated toys to help pay for his Kinosaki stay. The craft later entered the Siebold Collection—and is still made only in Kinosaki.
Today’s riverside scene is largely a post-disaster creation: after the 1925 earthquake and fires, Kinosaki widened its river and streets, lined the banks with Genbudo basalt, and planted willows in 1932.
Kinosaki’s autumn festival builds to a three-way contest at the bridge: a shrine mikoshi, its protective float, and a large danjiri face off. The festival’s present form took shape as shrine and festival structures were added in 1724 and 1764–65.
After being hit by a train, writer Shiga Naoya spent about 3 weeks convalescing in Kinosaki in 1913. His observations of a bee, a rat, and a salamander became part of “At Kinosaki,” published in 1917.
When an inn began using a spring on its own property for an indoor bath in 1927, a dispute over hot-spring rights lasted 23 years. The 1950 settlement recognized the Yushima district’s collective rights and preserved public baths alongside inn baths.
Kinosaki’s Ichino-yu wasn’t named because it was built first. It was once called “New Bath”; after a doctor praised it in 1734 as the finest bath under heaven, its name became Ichino-yu—“Number One Bath.”
In 1226, poet Fujiwara Teika’s diary recorded “Kizaki toji”—a hot-spring cure in Tajima. That entry shows Kinosaki was already a destination for bathing journeys more than 700 years ago.
