Oiso Onsen

Oiso Onsen is a historic coastal hot spring in the small resort town of Oiso in central Kanagawa Prefecture, where the elegant seaside villas and garden estates of Meiji-era prime ministers—including Ito Hirobumi, Yamagata Aritomo, and Yoshida Shigeru—transformed this pine-shaded coastal town into the unofficial 'summer capital' of Meiji and Taisho Japan, where the nation's elder statesmen shaped the destiny of a modernizing empire while gazing at Sagami Bay's glistening waters. The siliceous mineral waters of Oiso have supported bathing culture since before the Meiji era, drawing visitors to what was once one of Japan's first Western-style seaside resorts, where bathing in the sea and in mineral springs were both prescribed as modern health practices. The preserved Yoshida Shigeru memorial villa, the Oiso Juku post town remnants, and the centuries of political history concentrated in this small coastal resort give Oiso Onsen a historical gravitas extraordinary for a small beachside town.