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Aso-Kuju NP, Oita
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Yufuin’s beef-and-shouting festival grew from a pasture-saving plan: in 1972, city residents bought shares in local cattle to support farmers and protect grazing land from resort development. Owners later gathered with farmers over grilled beef—the start of the famous contest.
Around 850 hot-spring sources feed Yufuin. Rain filters underground through the basin’s mountains, then geothermal heat from both the Kuju volcanic area and the Yufu–Tsurumi volcanic area warms it before it rises.
Yufu appears in the 8th-century Bungo Fudoki, which connects the name to kozo trees whose bark was made into yu fiber. The modern spelling 湯布院 was coined in 1955, combining characters from Yufuin and neighboring Yunohira.
At nearby Lake Kinrin, fresh water and hot-spring water feed the same lake, keeping it warm year-round and sending up steam on chilly winter mornings. Its name recalls a Confucian scholar who spotted a golden-scaled fish there at sunset.
A 1748 document is unusually specific about Yufuin’s Yuno-tsubo spring: it is the only one in the basin recorded with both hot-spring cure visitors and an inn. Later records show neighboring villages helped maintain its communal bath.
In 1952, a proposal called for damming the Yufuin Basin, flooding homes and creating a lakeside resort. A youth-led protest helped defeat it; one of its leaders, doctor Iwao Eiichi, later became the new town’s first mayor.
Yufuin’s hot springs are not all clear: a local guide notes that some sodium-chloride waters can turn blue or milky white over time. They sit alongside alkaline simple springs and other mineral-rich waters.
Yufuin has no movie theater, yet its film festival began in 1976 through a partnership between local revitalizers and Oita City film fans. Yufu City describes it as Japan’s oldest still-existing film festival; volunteers run it.
The first Yufuin Film Festival, in 1976, included Nikkatsu Roman Porno films. When town councillors objected to showing them in the public hall, organizers moved those screenings to the neighboring gym instead.
Yufuin’s hot-spring festival dates to 1950 and begins with a ceremony called kensen-sai: an offering of hot-spring water in gratitude for the community’s thermal bounty.
In 1971, 3 young Yufuin community leaders visited health resorts in West Germany. They brought home ideas about the value of hot springs, nature and open space, which were incorporated into Yufuin’s plans for a restorative onsen town.
When Yufuin was designated a National Hot Spring Health Resort in 1959, it was still a scattering of inns among rice fields, not today’s resort town. Local leaders chose to build tourism around nature and rural scenery rather than a rush of large facilities.
In 1970, Yufuin residents opposed a proposed golf course at nearby Inoseto, a wetland outside the old town boundary. Their campaign helped launch a local nature group and became part of the community’s conservation-minded approach to tourism.
At Otomaru Onsenkan, a local public bath, Yakushi Nyorai—the Buddha associated with healing—is enshrined inside. Bathers place their admission fee in the offering box before enjoying the hot water.
