Shikokuchuo Onsen

Shikokuchuo Onsen is found in Shikokuchuo, a city whose very name — meaning 'Center of Shikoku' — reflects its position at the meeting point of Ehime, Kochi, Kagawa, and Tokushima prefectures in the Mishima-Kawanoe area where the Shikoku island's four administrative divisions converge around the Yoshino River watershed. The city is Japan's leading producer of specialty paper products including Japanese washi paper, tissue paper, and industrial paper grades, a manufacturing tradition that has made this unassuming city at the island's geographic center an unexpected powerhouse of the global paper industry whose annual output represents a significant proportion of Japan's total paper production. The surrounding landscape of the Nishimountains foothills and the broad Yoshino River plain provides an agricultural and forested backdrop to the paper mills that define the city's industrial identity. The onsen here draw on silica-rich geothermal springs from the complex geology of this multi-prefecture junction zone, providing mineral bathing at the literal center of Japan's most distinctively traditional island, where ancient Shikoku pilgrimage culture, modern paper industry, and the therapeutic tradition of hot spring bathing intersect.