Shinjuku Junisho Onsen

Shinjuku Junisho Onsen was a public bathing facility in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo — also known as Shinjuku Junisho Natural Onsen — that provided urban residents of Japan's most commercially intense neighborhood with access to genuinely natural thermal spring water for day bathing, a service that bridged the centuries-old Japanese tradition of communal bathing and the practical reality of metropolitan life until its closure on March 29, 2009. The facility occupied a historic part of Shinjuku associated with the ancient Junisho Benzaiten shrine and the Juroku-ya pond, a landscape now largely absorbed by the urban fabric of western Shinjuku but which once provided a natural and spiritual focal point for this part of the old Edo district. Shinjuku Junisho Onsen's closure marked the end of a rare opportunity for urban Shinjuku residents to experience natural thermal spring bathing in situ, and its memory endures as a reminder of the volcanic geothermal resources that lie beneath even the most built-over corners of the Tokyo metropolitan landscape.