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Joshin’etsukogen NP, Gunma
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The park’s green coating is no moss: it’s single-celled red algae, despite its blue-green look. Kusatsu strains handle pH-2 water across about 20–50°C, making these streamside mats tiny extremophiles.
“Sainokawara source” is really a family of roughly 50 springs, including Amber Pond and Demon’s Teahouse; together they gush about 1,400 liters a minute into the park’s steaming streams.
Inside the park, a string of red torii marks a branch of Tokyo’s Haneda Anamori Inari, established here around 1910. Its “lucky sand” is traditionally taken home and scattered for good fortune.
The park’s far-end bath covers about 500 m², but its water comes from another source: Bandai, which emerges at 94–95°C and pH 1.7. That is the spring’s temperature—not the bathing pool’s.
A Kusatsu guidebook from 1823 already names the “Oni Sumo Ring,” saying stones naturally lined up like a wrestling ring. Local legend says Jizō let demons wrestle there after they promised not to trouble villagers.
A Buddhist folk belief gives the barren pools a solemn story: children who died before their parents were said to gather in the otherworldly Sai-no-Kawara, while red-capped, red-bibbed Jizō protect them.
The hilltop busts are of German doctors Erwin von Bälz and Julius Scriba. Bälz first visited Kusatsu in 1878, repeatedly studying its time-bathing method and spring water before helping introduce the resort abroad.
A poem at the park turns the walk into a warm little memory: poet Saitō Mokichi wrote of hot water bubbling everywhere and warming him as he walked through the valley. The verse appears in his Kusatsu poems.
The park’s night lighting was designed around its steam: in a 2017 project, indirect lights were added along 300 m of path to make the rising vapor look three-dimensional, with lanterns to guide walkers.
