Takahagi Onsen

Takahagi Onsen serves the Pacific coast city of Takahagi in northeastern Ibaraki, where the Izura Coast — a dramatically scenic stretch of wave-carved granite cliffs and sea caves — was the chosen retreat of Tenshin Okakura, the philosopher and art historian who wrote The Book of Tea and championed Asian cultural heritage to Western audiences at the turn of the 20th century, making Izura famous as a place where Asian and Western artistic sensibilities first engaged in serious dialogue. The natural beauty of the coastal cliffs inspired Okakura and the artistic community he gathered here, and the coast today preserves the atmosphere of a place where solitude and the sea combine to produce conditions particularly favorable to thought and creative work. The onsen's mineral-rich coastal spring waters, seasoned by the Pacific geology of northeastern Ibaraki, offer therapeutic bathing on a coast whose cultural and natural heritage is equally remarkable.