Dōgo Onsen — photo: Arnaud Malon · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The oldest onsen in Japan: Dōgo, Arima, Shirahama, and what "oldest" means
Ask which onsen is the oldest in Japan and you will get three or four different answers, all said with confidence. They are not all wrong; they are answering different questions. One is about the oldest spring named in writing, one about the oldest inn still open, and one about local legend, which in Japan can run back thousands of years. This guide sorts them out: what the old books say, what is a claim, and what the water at each place is like today, with the numbers from our records.
The short answer
- Oldest in writing: Dōgo (Ehime), Arima (Hyōgo) and Shirahama (Wakayama). All three appear in the Nihon Shoki, the court chronicle finished in 720, and are called the 日本三古湯 (Nihon san-koyu), the three ancient springs of Japan. No one can say which of the three came first.
- Earliest dated visit: Arima. The chronicle records Emperor Jomei going there in 631 and staying about three months.
- Oldest onsen inn: Keiunkan at Nishiyama Onsen in Yamanashi, which dates itself to 705 and was listed by Guinness World Records in 2011 as the world's oldest hotel.
- Most often called "the oldest": Dōgo. Its claim of 3,000 years is a local tradition, not a date in a document.
Why there is no single answer
Hot springs are older than anyone who bathed in them. People in Japan were almost certainly using warm water from the ground long before anything was written down, and nearly every old onsen town has a founding story: a monk who found the spring, a wounded heron or deer that healed in it, a god who led someone there. These stories are part of the place, but they are not dates.
The earliest Japanese histories that survive were written in the early 700s: the Kojiki (712), the Nihon Shoki (720), and the provincial Fudoki records ordered in 713. So "oldest" in any sense you can check means "named in one of these books". Several springs are, and the books do not tell you which spring was in use first. That is why the three ancient springs are always listed as a group.
Dōgo: the one with the longest story
Dōgo Onsen in Matsuyama is the onsen most often described in English as the oldest in Japan. The Nihon Shoki names it as the Iyo hot spring, and records visits by Emperor Jomei and, later, Empress Saimei. A surviving fragment of the old Iyo Fudoki adds that Prince Shōtoku came and set up a stone inscription by the spring; the stone itself has not survived. The "3,000 years" you see on posters comes from local tradition, which places the discovery in prehistoric times.
The water today. Recorded at 42 to 51 °C and listed as a simple spring, mild and low in minerals. It is one of the best-known onsen in our records: 8th of 1,538 by how often its Wikipedia article is read.
What you can see. The old part is not the water but the building: Dōgo Onsen Honkan, the wooden public bathhouse from 1894, in the middle of the town. Our Dōgo guide explains its baths and the two newer public baths next to it.
Arima: the first dated visit
Arima Onsen, in the hills behind Kobe, has the earliest firm date. The Nihon Shoki says Emperor Jomei went to the Arima hot spring in the autumn of 631 and returned at the end of the year, and that he went again in 638. Arima is also one of the three springs Sei Shōnagon named around the year 1000 in The Pillow Book, in her short list of hot springs worth knowing. Later stories credit the monk Gyōki and others with restoring the town, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi with rebuilding it in the late 1500s.
The water today. The most varied of the three: recorded at 40 to 98 °C, with chloride, bicarbonate, iron and radioactive springs in our records. The iron-rich brown water is the one people come for. Arima is 4th of 1,538 in our count of Wikipedia readership.
Visiting. About an hour from Osaka, and easy as a day trip. See our Arima guide for the gold and silver water and the public baths.
Shirahama: the bath on the rocks
Nanki-Shirahama Onsen on the Wakayama coast appears in the chronicle as the Muro hot spring. The Nihon Shoki records Empress Saimei going there in 658. The spring most tied to that history is 崎の湯 (Sakinoyu), a set of rock pools at the edge of the sea, which is still a public bath.
The water today. Recorded at 32 to 85 °C, with chloride, bicarbonate and carbon dioxide springs in our records. 48th of 1,538 by readership.
Visiting. About three hours from Kyoto or Osaka in our travel data, by JR limited express and a short bus. See our Shirahama guide.
Some lists put Iwaki Yumoto in Fukushima in place of Shirahama as the third ancient spring. The usual list is Dōgo, Arima and Shirahama.
Tamatsukuri: the one in the Fudoki
If you widen the question to all the 8th-century records, Tamatsukuri Onsen near Matsue belongs in it. The Izumo Fudoki, a provincial record completed in 733, describes the spring and the people of the area bathing in it. Sei Shōnagon's short list of hot springs in The Pillow Book names three: Nanakuri, Arima and Tamatsukuri. Tamatsukuri is recorded at 42 °C, with chloride and sulfate water, and is 13th of 1,538 by readership. See our Tamatsukuri guide.
The oldest onsen inns
A different question is which inn has been open the longest, and here there are documents of a kind and a record book to point to.
- Keiunkan, Nishiyama Onsen (Yamanashi). The inn dates itself to 705 and takes its name from the Keiun era. Guinness World Records listed it in 2011 as the oldest hotel in the world. It sits alone in the mountains of the upper Hayakawa valley. Nishiyama Onsen is recorded at 52 °C, pH 9.36, with 2,030 litres a minute of chloride and sulfate water. Do not confuse it with the other Nishiyama Onsen in Fukushima.
- Hōshi, Awazu Onsen (Ishikawa). This inn gives its founding as 718 and is usually called the second oldest. Awazu Onsen has 8 inns and sulfate water in our records. It is in the Kaga onsen area near Komatsu; see the three best onsen near Kanazawa.
Both claims rest on the inns' own family records. Running a business for 1,300 years is not the same as the building being 1,300 years old: both inns have been rebuilt many times.
Other "oldest" claims you will meet
Many towns call themselves one of the oldest. A few you may see:
- Yunomine in Wakayama, on the Kumano Kodo, which says it is about 1,800 years old. Its tiny bath Tsuboyu is part of the Kumano Kodo World Heritage site. Recorded at 92 °C.
- Kusatsu and many others have founding stories naming Gyōki or Prince Yamato Takeru. These are traditions; we do not treat them as dates.
When a town says "1,300 years", it usually means a founding story from the 700s. When it says "3,000 years", it means a legend.
Does old mean better?
Not in itself. Age tells you a spring has kept flowing and that people kept coming back, which is something. It does not tell you how hot the water is or what is in it, and both can change over the centuries: at Dōgo, for example, the water now comes from wells several hundred metres deep, not from the original spring. Of the three ancient springs, Arima has the hottest and most unusual water, Dōgo the most famous building, and Shirahama the setting by the sea. If what you want is water that is hot from the ground, see onsen temperatures; about half the onsen in our records with a temperature on file reach 42 °C (573 of 1,167).
Seeing the three ancient springs
- Arima is the easiest: about an hour from Osaka or Kobe.
- Shirahama is about three hours south of Osaka on the JR Kisei Line.
- Dōgo is on Shikoku: a short tram ride from central Matsuyama, which you reach by plane, or by train from Okayama.
Arima and Shirahama fit in one trip from Osaka. Dōgo is a separate one. See the best onsen near Osaka and Kyoto for planning from Kansai.
Want to know why some water is hot and some is heated? See how onsen are heated. What do "simple", "chloride" and "sulfate" mean? See onsen water types. For the towns with the most character today, see the three best onsen towns in Japan. New to this? Start with onsen etiquette, and read going to an onsen with tattoos if that applies to you.