Katakura Onsen Kubota

Katakura Onsen Kubota is a hot spring bathing facility in Ube city in Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan, in the western Honshu industrial city on the Seto Inland Sea coast known for its cement production, chemical industry, and the Tokiwa Park botanical garden whose rose collection is one of Japan's finest, adding botanical beauty to an industrial urban identity that coexists with the hot spring wellness tradition characteristic of Yamaguchi prefecture's mining and industrial heritage. Yamaguchi prefecture's position at the western tip of Honshu — the 'finger' of Japan pointing toward Korea and Kyushu — has given it historical significance as a gateway between Honshu and the continent, and as the domain of the Mōri clan whose castle town of Hagi became the birthplace of many of the Meiji Restoration's leading statesmen and revolutionaries. Katakura Onsen Kubota provides mineral spring bathing in Ube's urban hot spring tradition, connecting the city's industrial working population and residents to the Japanese custom of communal thermal bathing as a daily restorative practice in the mild western Seto Inland Sea climate.