Agematsu Onsen Kiso

Agematsu Onsen Kiso is a mountain hot spring in Agematsu Town in the Kiso Valley of Nagano Prefecture, a community whose forestry heritage is celebrated in the Akasawa Natural Recreation Forest, designated the Birthplace of Forestry in Japan for its role in the development of Japanese scientific forest management during the Edo period when the Kiso hinoki cypress — prized as the finest building timber in Japan — was protected under strict government regulation, with unlicensed felling punishable by death in a regime that preserved one of the country's finest surviving old-growth cypress forests for future generations. The Kiso hinoki cypress forests that define Agematsu's landscape are among Japan's most precious natural and cultural resources, supplying the timber used in the periodic rebuilding of Ise Grand Shrine — Japan's most sacred Shinto sanctuary — and in the finest traditional woodworking, lacquerware, and architectural joinery that require the highest quality aromatic cypress available only from the historic Kiso forests. The sodium-bicarbonate thermal waters here offer relaxation amid a forestry heritage landscape of genuine national significance, where the aromatic cypress forests that have defined Japanese building culture for centuries continue to grow in the deep mountain valleys of the historic Kiso logging country.