Yubatake was added to Your Favorites!
Joshin’etsukogen NP, Gunma
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Tokugawa Yoshimune had Kusatsu’s hot spring water carried to Edo Castle twice, in 1726 and 1743. The square wooden frame still set in Yubatake marks the place where it was drawn.
The stone rail commemorates 100 people linked to Kusatsu, then gained an unusual extra: in 2014, the fictional Roman bath engineer Lucius Modestus joined them after Thermae Romae II filmed here.
The green growth on Yubatake’s hot channels is an acid-loving alga called Ideyu-kogome (Cyanidium caldarium). It thrives in hot, strongly acidic water—conditions that make this little organism a surprising local specialist.
Yunohana, the mineral-rich deposit in Yubatake’s channels, is still gathered by hand. A fifth-generation local producer scrapes it out about every 2 months, then dries it for roughly a month before it becomes a bathing additive.
Yubatake gushes about 4,040 liters of water every minute at 52.7°C, with a pH of 2.1. Its powerful spring supplies more than 80 inns and communal baths around Kusatsu.
Seven wooden troughs, each about 40 meters long, help cool the spring and disperse hydrogen sulfide. The timber used for the channels comes from red pines more than 150 years old.
Yubatake’s distinctive gourd-shaped stone surround dates to 1975, when artist Taro Okamoto’s Contemporary Art Research Institute designed it. Edo-period drawings show a much more rectangular spring.
The cascade at Yubatake once flowed beside a communal bath called Taki-no-yu. It was demolished in 1972, so today’s waterfall setting was once part of everyday bathing life in Kusatsu.
Older records called the source 瀧ノ元, 湯の川, 湯壺 or 湯の池. A map from 1884 writes 湯畠; a 1910 map uses the modern form, 湯畑.
Yubatake’s sulfur-scented steam is included in Japan’s 100 Fragrant Landscapes, a Ministry of the Environment selection. Here, the unmistakable smell is part of the place’s celebrated character.
In 2017, Yubatake became a National Place of Scenic Beauty. The protected landscape includes not just the spring, but its channels, exposed rock, waterfall, plunge pool and stone surround.
