Namekitsu Onsen

Namekitsu Onsen is a sulfurous hot spring facility in Nihonmatsu city in Fukushima prefecture, Japan, in the mountainous Adatara region where the Adatara volcanic chain produces abundant sulfurous hot spring resources in a landscape made famous by the Meiji poet Takuboku Ishikawa's lyrical evocation of the Adatara mountains' 'breast' profile as a symbol of maternal comfort and longing for home — the Adatara yama ni Haguruma wo megure, still one of the most beloved images in Japanese mountain poetry. Nihonmatsu is historically significant as the site of the Nihonmatsu Castle (Kasumiga-jō), where the young Nihonmatsu Shōnengun — the Boy Squad — died fighting against the Meiji imperial forces in 1868, one of the most poignant stories of the Boshin War, and the city's cultural landscape combines this samurai heritage with the volcanic mountain and hot spring culture of the Azuma-Adatara range. The sulfurous spring waters of Namekitsu emerge from the volcanic hydrothermal system associated with Mount Adatara, one of Japan's '100 Famous Mountains,' providing therapeutic mineral bathing in the poetically celebrated mountain landscape of Fukushima's inland highlands.