Onsen: Restoring body and soul in Japan's fabulous hot springs

Making a creaking sound, the wooden entrance door opens, and Sumie Tamura is standing there with a friendly smile. "Irashaimase" - welcome - she says while bowing gracefully to greet me. Her distinguished appearance and friendly smile immediately make me feel at ease.

Sumie Tamura is the landlady of Yamamoto kan, a traditional hotel in Kusatsu. The small city in the mountains some 180 kilometres north-west of Tokyo is famous for its many onsen - natural thermal springs which can be found virtually throughout the entire country because Japan lies in an active volcanic region.

Japan's hot spring etiquette

Onsen usually include both indoor and outdoor baths. The Yamamoto kan does not have an outdoor area, but there is a pool in the cellar with separate areas for men and women. "Our guests come here in order to relax and recuperate," Tamura says leading me along creaking dark wooden floorboards to the stairs descending down to the onsen.

Before dipping into the water, you take off your clothes and place them in a basket in the dressing rooms. The bathing areas are used naked - bathing trunks and bikinis have no place in a Japanese onsen. Bathers can however use a towel to cover up while walking to the pool, but the towel may not be taken into the water. Before that, bathers thoroughly wash themselves with soap, sitting on wooden or stone stools in front of mirrors on the wall with a faucet, tub and shower heads.

Only then do you enter the common pool. Hot steam is rising from the water - in the Yamamato kan it is around 42 to 43 degrees Celsius. Other onsens with lower temperatures may be better suited to small children; however onsen baths are no paddling pools and jumping into them is prohibited. It is also customary not to talk loudly or play music while in the onsen.

The long tradition of the onsen of Kusatsu

The roughly 100 thermal springs of Kusatsu which in earlier centuries were frequented by Samurai warriors are said to be especially beneficial for a person's health. "The Samurai came here to Kusatsu in order to heal the wounds they suffered in battle," Tamura says while serving up a cup of green tea.

A few metres from the hotel sulphurous spring water bubbles up in the yubatake - which translates as field of hot water - steaming under the open sky. The water runs off through several rows of wooden gutters. The yubatake is the main attraction in Kusatsu, one of the most popular onsen resorts in Japan.

The heart and soul of the ryokan

In the Yamamoto kan, okamisan Sumie Tamura - which translates as landlady - is the heart and soul of the ryokan, or traditional inn. Each morning she is up early in the kitchen, working with the cooks to prepare the food. Later, together with her servants, she cleans the rooms, stows away the futons, washes the tea cups and renews the ikebana style decorations, traditional flower arrangements.

The guests' well-being is Tamura's utmost priority. "They are like a big family to me," the 74-year-old says, leading me with quiet tiny steps to my room, which is laid out with tatami - rice straw mats. Traditionally, every stay at the ryokan is planned down to the last detail: What meals will be served and at what specific time, even when the beds will be made. For some foreigners this may take some getting used to.

"But for the Japanese, this is luxury," says Franz Waldenberger, director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo. "They regard it as a service which relieves them of having to decide everything, what to do and when. It's a little bit like visiting family."

Traditions beginning to change

Since the coronavirus pandemic, however, more and more guests have been asking not to be disturbed, Tamura says. Many request, for example, that the hotel personnel do not enter their rooms to stow away the futons, as is customary. This newfound desire for privacy, common in Western hotels, has even extended to the bathing. Instead of using the common bathing area as is usual in a ryokan, today younger people especially ask for their private own bath to be set up and filled with onsen water in their room, Tamura says, smiling.

"But we're all getting older," she says, expressing confidence that with the years even the younger people will at some point rediscover the charm of traditional onsen culture.