Japanese Inns and Hot Springs. Rob Goss
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featuring prime regional beef or highly prized abalone.
Near the end of the meal, just when you are beginning to wonder if you can physically manage to eat anything else, will come the gohan (rice; often including vegetables or seafood), konomono (pickles) and tomewan (miso soup) courses, and to round things off the mizumono (dessert), which could be as simple as sliced fruit or as tempting as a green tea crème brûlée. As you roll away from the dinner table, just remember that in less than twelve hours’ time you will be back at the table working your way through a multi-course breakfast.
It’s for this reason that most high-quality ryokan don’t offer no-meal stays; after all, they employ some of the country’s best chefs, sometimes serving only several groups a night in the smallest of ryokan, so they simply wouldn’t be able to survive on room-only customers. Even if they did offer a no-meal option, given that it’s common to only stay a single night at a ryokan, to go without the food would be to miss out on a crucial element of the experience—it’s more than worth the splurge.
The okami or “house mother” at the Yoshida Sanso (see pages 76–81) and her daughter. Personal attention and service by experienced okami are a key part of the ryokan experience. They literally take care of you as your mother would—including serving lavish meals in your room.
Then, of course, there are the baths. From working on this book I’ve learned that with so many subtle and not so subtle variations between ryokan, there really isn’t a typical ryokan per se. It is common for ryokan to offer a mixture of bathing options, from small private in-room baths to a selection of large communal bathing areas that might feature an outdoor bath accented by rocks or with views into nature, and indoor wooden baths that might give off the gentle scent of cypress or be infused with citrus. Given that many ryokan are in geothermically active regions, it’s common too for the bath waters to come straight from natural hot-spring sources deep beneath the ryokan, at a naturally piping hot, muscle-relaxing 40 or so degrees Celsius (104 degrees Farenheit) that makes a hot-spring soak one of Japan’s most treasured treats. One that’s said to be healthy, too, with the mineral-rich waters attributed with alleviating ailments as diverse as arthritis and piles.
Tosen Goshobo (see pages 164–167). Volcanic hot-spring bathing with water direct from the ground is another vital feature of the high-quality ryokan in this book.
With the design of a ryokan there are also certain unifying elements, although as this book hopefully demonstrates, there is great variety, too. Rooms in traditional ryokan frequently feature tatami mat flooring and at night futon are laid out on the floor. In one part of the room you’ll find an alcove, called a tokonoma, where a pictorial or calligraphic scroll will be hung, perhaps alongside a flower arrangement. The center of the room will have a low table, where etiquette dictates that the most important guest sits with his or her back to the tokonoma. There’ll be sliding screen doors, too, and laid out on arrival will be your cotton yukata gown, which you can change into for the duration of your stay, allowing you to shed your real-world clothes and immerse yourself in the past.
Many ryokan have rustic designs or even employ old farmhouse buildings like Wa-no-Sato (pages 156–159), located in Gifu Prefecture.
All ryokan place a high value on comfort, which includes the sleeping arrangements. Typically this means a comfortable futon bed laid out each night on a soft tatami floor, but some ryokan, like Seiryuso (see pages 58-61) also feature Western-style beds.
Ryokan rooms are designed for relaxation, which often means contemplation of a beautifully designed Japanese garden, such as this one at Asaba (pages 40–45).
Most of the ryokan in this book (except for those in the historic districts of Kyoto and Nara) are located in the countryside in a gorgeous setting, like Yagyu-no-Sho (pages 52–57).
A TRADITION OF FINE HOSPITALITY
As anyone who has stayed at a ryokan will tell you, the experience is more than a window to classic Japan, it affords an opportunity to immerse yourself in tradition; to experience old Japan as the Japanese have done for generations—in a way that is unadulterated, unhurried, and undoubtedly unforgettable.
Like so much of Japan’s richly woven cultural tapestry, the ryokan has a long and winding history that has seen it develop from humble beginnings to today’s pampering retreat. Delve into the ryokan’s roots and you’ll be reaching back to the Nara period (710–784), a time when the political, social and religious structures of classical Japanese civilization were taking shape. It was then that simple but free rest houses for travelers called fuseya first appeared. They were run by Buddhist monks to help keep travelers from the perils of the road.
In the Heian era (794–1191), a rise in the popularity of pilgrimages among the elite classes saw a twist on fuseya arise, with feudal manors and temples opening themselves to pilgrims. It’s hard to know just how spartan the latter—called shukubo—would have been back then, but the modern-day version of temple accommodation is a fascinating experience for pilgrims and tourists alike. In Koya-san, the mountain-top town home to the Shingon sect of Buddhism, almost half of the one hundred or so temples and monasteries that hug the mountain provide almost ryokan-like shukubo, with modest tatami-mat rooms but exquisite vegetarian shojin-ryori cuisine and opportunities to experience temple life by attending morning prayers and meditation.
It’s difficult to entirely separate shukubo from ryokan—many current ryokan, for example, were once shukubo. But as temple lodgings developed on major travel routes, along with the development of roads, bridges, and small towns, so did accommodation for non-pilgrims. Initially, this took the form of simple lodgings called kichin-yado, where guests received no meals but were able to seek shelter from the elements. Guests were charged not for their rooms here, but for the wood they would use to cook and keep warm with. By the time of the Edo era (1603–1868), a developing economy and increased internal trade saw more travel, and the appearance of accommodation called hatago, offering merchants and other travelers a more comprehensive version of kichin-yado, with meals provided and accommodation fees charged.
Personal service at a ryokan not only means lavish ten-course meals in your room but occasionally the chef may even serve you personally, as shown here at Suisen (pages 116–121).
At this time, with the Tokugawa shogunate strictly keeping provincial lords in check, a high-end version of hatago also came in to being, and besides being another stepping stone toward today’s ryokan, its own roots reveal much about the politics of the Edo era. So the shogunate could keep a close eye on them, daimyo (feudal lords) were obliged to alternate annually between living in their own regions and living in the capital Edo (now called Tokyo). This saw the rise of honjin lodgings for the daimyo on common travel routes, as well as less fancy lodgings for their staff, but even with these and hatago in place another development was needed before the ryokan became what it is today—widespread travel for leisure.
From the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when military rule with its harsh travel restrictions was abolished, travel and sightseeing as a pastime began to grow in popularity, initially among the wealthy, then spreading to a broad spectrum of society from the end