Konan Onsen Kochi

Konan Onsen Kochi is located in Konan, a city in eastern Kochi Prefecture on the Pacific coast where the Monobe River meets the sea, in a region of traditional fishing, agriculture, and the spectacular Tosa Wan (Tosa Bay) coastline whose exposure to the full Pacific swell has historically made this stretch of the Kochi coast both productively rich in marine resources and dangerously vulnerable to the tsunamis generated by the Nankai Trough — the submarine fault zone offshore whose periodic great earthquakes and resulting tsunamis have repeatedly devastated the communities of Kochi's Pacific coast throughout recorded history, driving an exceptional local culture of tsunami preparedness and the construction of elevated evacuation towers visible throughout the coastal communities. The onsen here draw on silica-rich geothermal springs from the complex geological zone of the Kochi Basin, providing mineral bathing in a coastal community whose Pacific frontier character and deep awareness of geological risk create a distinctively clear-eyed relationship with the natural forces that both sustain and threaten life on Japan's southern Pacific shore.