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Towada-Hachimantai NP, Aomori
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At Tsuta Onsen, the bath sits directly over the spring: hot water bubbles up through gaps in the tub’s bottom, filling it without first flowing through pipes or touching the air. It’s a wonderfully direct way to meet the source.
A 1969 honeymoon stay at Tsuta inspired lyricist Osami Okamoto to write a poem that became Takuro Yoshida’s hit “Tabi no Yado.” In the old Room 66, a small pot on the brazier kept sake warm.
While wintering at Tsuta with poet Kodama Kagai in 1923, Ōmachi Keigetsu drafted a petition to make the Towada area a national park. Towada National Park was established in 1936, with Keigetsu’s appeal helping the cause.
A 2024 report on dinner at the inn described tempura of smelt from Lake Ogawara, Aomori seafood, whole-grilled char from Towada, and a tasting of 3 cuts of Kuroushi beef—a little edible tour of the region.
The earliest record of Tsuta’s hot spring dates to 1147. It describes a pool and a nearby hut for bathers, probably built by local hunters or charcoal makers; winters were so harsh that permanent buildings came much later.
The name Senkyo-no-yu comes from a phrase by writer Yasushi Inoue, “senkyo satsusatsu,” likening the spring’s sound to wind. The bath’s rafters rise as high as 12 meters, giving that burble room to echo.
Writer Ōmachi Keigetsu loved Tsuta so much that he moved his registered home here in 1925. He died at the inn on June 10 that year, aged 56; his farewell verse is carved at his nearby grave.
In 1924, Keigetsu returned to Tsuta for the consecration of a Yakushi Nyorai statue designed by artist Kōsugi Misei. Yakushi is a Buddhist figure associated with healing, a fitting presence beside a long-loved hot spring.
The ponds around Tsuta Onsen sit in a landscape transformed thousands of years ago, when a debris avalanche swept down 1,298-meter Mt. Akakura and reshaped its valley. The mountain scenery has a dramatic origin beneath its calm reflections.
Suganuma, one of the ponds along the trail from Tsuta Onsen, is not entirely natural: it was made as a staging pond for logs being gathered to float downstream. Today, it blends into the forest and is known for spring skunk cabbage.
Hyotannuma really was once shaped like a gourd. Fallen plants and incoming sediment have gradually filled it in, making it a living example of a pond slowly changing into wetland and then dry land.
Around June, forest green tree frogs breed beside Hyotannuma, near Tsuta Onsen. Look up toward the branches: the frogs’ egg masses form conspicuous, soft-looking clumps of foam above the water.
Behind Keigetsu’s grave, a Japanese oak estimated at about 400 years old rises 23 meters, with a trunk circumference of 5.18 meters. Its top has split into 2 great branches, yet the old tree remains vigorous.
A room in Tsuta’s wooden main building was used in the 1967 film Midaregumo, directed by Mikio Naruse. The inn says the same room is still used for guests—so this piece of movie history remains part of the working ryokan.
The nearby “Tsuta Seven Ponds” have a small counting surprise: the main loop passes 6, while Akanuma lies farther away. Aomori’s official tourism guide reports Akanuma’s water clarity at 18.2 meters—equal to its maximum depth.
