Shirakitsune Onsen
Illustration photo — not a verified picture of this exact spot.
- Location
- Toki, Gifu, Japan
- Water type
- thermal
- Temperature
- 40 °C
- pH
- 7.3
Water profile
Relaxing — deep, immediate muscle release.
Rich in trace elements — gentle on the skin.
Soft water — natural, classic buoyancy.
Shirakitsune Onsen—White Fox Spring—takes its name from the white fox (shirokitsune), the sacred messenger of Inari, the Shinto deity of rice, fertility, agriculture, and foxes whose shrines are among the most numerous in all of Japan, the fox's white pelt marking it as a divine intermediary between the human and spiritual worlds. In Japanese thermal spring culture, a spring named for the white fox carries the implied blessing and protective oversight of Inari's sacred messengers, suggesting a water of particular purity and divine favor emerging from the earth under the fox deity's auspicious guidance. Rising in Gifu Prefecture's volcanic mountain landscape, this spring connects thermal healing to the vast network of Inari devotion that spans every community in Japan where agriculture and the reverence of sacred fox energy remain intertwined.