Hinoemata Onsen

Hinoemata Onsen is located in Hinoemata Village, Minamiaizu District, Fukushima Prefecture — Japan's smallest village by population — a remote mountain community that has preserved both its traditional performing arts tradition and its thermal bathing heritage in one of the most geographically isolated inhabited valleys in the Tohoku region. The spring flows with sulfate-rich thermal waters from the volcanic geology beneath the Aizu mountain range, providing visitors to this remarkable village with the restorative pleasure of naturally heated mineral bathing in a setting defined by deep cedar forests, cascading rivers, and the kind of quiet that exists only in Japan's most remote inhabited valleys. Hinoemata Onsen invites visitors to combine the extraordinary cultural experience of Japan's smallest village — home to the Hinoemata Kabuki tradition recognized as an intangible cultural heritage — with the therapeutic warmth of sulfate mineral spring water rising from one of Tohoku's most beautifully isolated volcanic mountain settings.