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Ginzan Onsen — photo: さかおり · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Onsen in Japanese: what the word means, the kanji, and how to read onsen town names

"Onsen" is a Japanese word, written 温泉. It means a hot spring, and by extension the baths and the town built around one. This guide explains the two characters, how to say the word, the handful of related words you will see on signs and maps, and how the names of the best-known onsen towns are written, which is what you need when a station sign, a bus or a map shows only kanji.

The short answer

• 温 (on) means warm. 泉 (sen) means a spring. Together, onsen is "warm spring": a hot spring, a hot-spring bath, or a hot-spring town.
• Say it in two even beats, on-sen, with a short "e" as in "send". Not "on-seen".
• 湯 (yu) means hot water, and is the character on the curtain at the bath entrance. ♨ is the map symbol for a hot spring.
• Town names are read in Japanese, not by the everyday meaning of the characters, and several are irregular. The list below gives the common ones.

The two characters

温 is the character for warm or mild. On its own it is read atataka, as in a warm day; in compound words it is read on. 泉 is a spring or fountain, read izumi on its own and sen in compounds. Both readings in onsen are the older, Chinese-derived ones, which is why the word sounds nothing like the Japanese words for warm and spring.

In everyday Japanese the word covers more than the water. "Going to an onsen" can mean a single bath, an inn with its own spring, or a whole town. Under Japanese law, water or steam from the ground counts as an onsen if it is at least 25 °C at the source or carries certain dissolved minerals, so a cool spring can still be an onsen. Our guide to onsen water types explains the labels.

Readers from Taiwan and Hong Kong will see the first character written 溫, with an extra stroke on the right. That is the traditional form; Japan uses the simplified 温. They are the same character, and a Japanese search engine treats them alike.

How to say onsen and ryokan

• Onsen おんせん: on-sen. Japanese gives each part the same length and little stress, so don't lean hard on either syllable.
• Ryokan 旅館: ryo-kan, two beats. "Ryo" is one syllable, like "Rio" said quickly, not "ree-oh". The characters mean travel and building: a traditional inn. See what a ryokan dinner and breakfast are like.
• Onsen-gai 温泉街: the onsen town's main street of inns, baths and shops.

Words you will see around an onsen

• 湯 (yu), hot water. The cloth curtain at a bath entrance, the noren, often has nothing on it but this character. In names it is read yu: Yumura 湯村, Yunishigawa 湯西川, Nagayu 長湯.
• 風呂 (furo), a bath. 露天風呂 (rotenburo) is an open-air bath; 内湯 (uchiyu) an indoor one.
• 外湯 (sotoyu) and 共同浴場 (kyōdō yokujō), the town's public baths, as in Kinosaki and Shibu.
• 貸切風呂 (kashikiri-buro), a bath you book for your group. See private baths.
• 日帰り入浴 (higaeri nyūyoku), day bathing without staying the night. See onsen day trips.
• 源泉 (gensen), the source. 源泉かけ流し (gensen kakenagashi) means the bath is fed straight from the source and overflows rather than being recirculated.
• 温泉郷 (onsenkyō), a group of springs and small settlements under one name, such as Nyūtō 乳頭温泉郷 or Yudanaka-Shibu 湯田中渋温泉郷.

The signs inside the bath itself (men, women, the daily swap, mixed bathing, cleaning in progress) are covered in onsen etiquette.

What the names in our records look like

Of the 1,538 onsen areas in our records, 1,534 have 温泉 in their Japanese name. The four that don't are Sukayu 酸ヶ湯, whose name already ends in "hot water", the Jigokudani valley in Toyama, and two small islands in Kagoshima. 63 names end in 温泉郷. 164 contain 湯, and 73 start with it, so if you see a place name beginning with 湯 on a map, there is a fair chance there is a bath there. Rivers and mountains are common too: 123 onsen names contain 川 (river) and 93 contain 山 (mountain).

Onsen town names in kanji

Place names in Japan were often written with characters chosen for their sound, centuries ago, so the meaning of the characters is not always the meaning of the name, and some readings are ones you would not guess. Here are the towns people look up most, with the full name as it appears on Japanese signs.

• Kusatsu 草津温泉: grass and harbour. One common explanation is that the name grew out of an old word for "stinking water", for the smell of the acidic, sulfurous spring. See Kusatsu.
• Ginzan 銀山温泉: silver mountain, or silver mine. The town grew up near a silver mine. See Ginzan.
• Arima 有馬温泉: the characters are "have" and "horse", picked for the sound. See Arima.
• Kinosaki 城崎温泉: castle and cape. 城 is usually read shiro or jō; here it takes an old reading, ki. See Kinosaki.
• Ikaho 伊香保温泉: three characters used for sound; the name is very old. See Ikaho.
• Shima 四万温泉: "four" and "ten thousand", that is forty thousand, but read Shima. Not to be confused with Ise-Shima in Mie. See Shima.
• Gero 下呂温泉: two characters used for sound. See Gero.
• Hirayu 平湯温泉: flat and hot water. See Hirayu.
• Nozawa 野沢温泉: field and marsh. See Nozawa.
• Nyūtō 乳頭温泉郷: named after the mountain above it, Mount Nyūtō; the characters mean nipple, after the peak's shape. See Nyūtō.
• Yunomine 湯の峰温泉: hot water and peak, joined by the kana の (no), "of". See Yunomine.
• Zaō 蔵王温泉: storehouse and king, from Zaō Gongen, the deity of the mountain. See Zaō.
• Shibu 渋温泉: a single character meaning astringent, the dry taste of unripe persimmon. See Shibu.
• Kinugawa 鬼怒川温泉: demon, anger and river, "the angry demon river", a fitting name for a river that floods. Older spellings include 絹川, "silk river". See Kinugawa.
• Kurokawa 黒川温泉 is black river, and Shirahone 白骨温泉 is white bones, usually explained by the white deposits the water leaves. See Kurokawa and Shirahone.
• Noboribetsu 登別温泉 comes from the Ainu language of Hokkaido, usually given as a muddy or deeply coloured river; the kanji were fitted to the sound. See Noboribetsu.
• Ibusuki 指宿温泉: finger and lodging, with a reading nobody would guess. See Ibusuki.

The ♨ symbol

♨ is the hot-spring mark: a bowl with three wavy lines of steam. It appears on Japanese maps, road signs and the doors of baths, and it is in Unicode as "hot springs". Isobe Onsen in Gunma claims the earliest known use, on a map from a land dispute in 1661; that rests on local records. On a Japanese map, ♨ marks a hot spring or a bath, not necessarily one you can use, so check the place before you go.

Using this on the road

• Match the kanji, not the romaji. Bus destination boards at rural stops are often in kanji only. Look for the first character of the town, then 温泉.
• Same name, different place. There are two Kurokawa Onsen in our records, one in Kumamoto and a much smaller one in Hyōgo, and Shirahama is both the big resort in Wakayama and a town in Chiba. Check the prefecture when you search.
• Searching in Japanese. Typing the full name, such as 銀山温泉, into a map or train app usually gives better results than the romaji.

How we put this together

Search suggestions in English ran to about 47 phrases on this, from "onsen meaning" and "onsen kanji" to "kusatsu onsen kanji", "how to pronounce nozawa onsen" and "kinugawa onsen meaning", and Chinese searches asked for the Japanese spelling of a dozen towns. The name counts come from the 1,538 onsen areas in our records. Explanations of where a name comes from are the commonly given ones; for many old place names the real origin is not certain, and we say so where it matters.

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