Nankoku Onsen

Nankoku Onsen lies adjacent to Kochi City in a community that serves as the gateway to the prefectural capital through Kochi Ryoma Airport — named for Kochi's most beloved son, the Meiji-era reformer Sakamoto Ryoma — and whose position in the Monobe River delta has made it one of the agricultural heartlands of the Kochi Basin, producing the vegetables and rice that supply the city's famous Nichiyo-ichi Sunday Market. The ancient Tosa domain whose capital stood nearby produced a disproportionate share of Japan's Meiji-era reformers, a fact explained by the relative geographic isolation of the Kochi Basin that both preserved independent thinking and created a hunger for engagement with the wider world once the feudal restrictions were lifted. The onsen's siliceous mineral waters provide restorative bathing for travelers arriving at the airport and exploring the cultural richness of the Tosa heartland, where the reformist spirit of the Meiji era is still celebrated as the defining contribution of Kochi people to the making of modern Japan.