Shigaraki Hot Spring Shigaraki Ware

Shigaraki Hot Spring in Koka, Shiga prefecture, draws chloride-rich geothermal waters in the heartland of Shigaraki ware pottery — one of Japan's six ancient kilns, producing rustic anagama-fired ceramics since the Nara period whose rough-textured, ash-glazed surfaces and natural fire-marks have been the most prized of Japanese folk pottery for over 1,200 years. The same Shigaraki clay stratum that produces Japan's most celebrated traditional ceramic — the tanuki (raccoon dog) statues that flank every Japanese restaurant entrance are invariably Shigaraki ware — also yields the geothermal spring system that feeds the local thermal bathing tradition. The nearby MIHO MUSEUM in the Shigaraki hills — a masterpiece of I.M. Pei architecture housing an extraordinary private collection of ancient art from Persia, Egypt, and Japan, accessible via a mountain tunnel and suspension bridge through cherry blossom forest — creates one of Japan's most unexpected museum-in-landscape juxtapositions within easy reach of the hot spring.