Imabari Radium Onsen

Imabari Radium Onsen in Imabari City, Ehime Prefecture, operated as a public bathing facility known for its mildly radioactive radon-bearing waters—a spring type popular in Japan during the twentieth century within the tradition of European radium spa culture. The original main building of the facility was recognized as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property, preserving an architectural testament to the early twentieth-century Japanese enthusiasm for Western-influenced spa culture in a building of distinctive historical character. Bathing operations were suspended in March 2014 and the facility subsequently closed, leaving the registered building as a monument to a chapter in Japanese bathing culture when radioactive mineral springs were considered the apex of thermal fashion.