Kinosaki Nishimuraya Hotel Shogetsukan

Kinosaki Onsen is one of Japan's most perfectly preserved classic spa towns, where a single willow-lined canal street of wooden ryokan facades and seven distinct communal bathhouses each with its own mineral character and architectural personality create the definitive traditional Japanese onsen town experience that other resorts aspire to recreate. The Nishimuraya Shogetsukan is Kinosaki's most distinguished and historically celebrated ryokan, a place of profound literary heritage where Nobel Prize laureate Shiga Naoya convalesced in 1913 and wrote 'At Kinosaki' — one of the masterpieces of modern Japanese literature inspired directly by the act of therapeutic bathing in these chloride volcanic waters. The enduring ritual of strolling in yukata between the stone-paved bathhouses on a winter evening, collecting the circular bath stamp at each sotoyu, remains one of the most beloved and quintessentially Japanese thermal experiences in existence.