Goshogawara Tsugaru Onsen

Goshogawara Tsugaru Onsen is situated in Goshogawara City in the Tsugaru plain of western Aomori Prefecture, most famously known as the home of the Tachi Neputa festival, in which gigantic standing floats up to24 meters tall representing samurai warriors, demons, and mythological figures are paraded through the city streets accompanied by the haunting melody of Tsugaru shamisen and taiko drumming in one of Japan's most dramatic and visually overwhelming summer festivals. The city is also closely associated with the writer Dazai Osamu, one of Japan's greatest 20th-century novelists, who was born in the nearby village of Kanagi and whose novels including No Longer Human draw on the social contradictions and existential anguish of the Tsugaru gentry class from which he came. The mild sodium-bicarbonate thermal waters here offer relaxation in a city that carries both the thunderous theatrical energy of its enormous festival tradition and the literary melancholy of one of modern Japanese literature's most celebrated and tragic voices.