Dogo Onsen Honkan
- Getting there
- Dogo Onsen district, Matsuyama, reachable by tram from the city centre
Why it’s in the log
Dogo Onsen's hot springs are referenced in Japan's oldest texts, and while the current honkan (main building) dates to 1894, the site's bathing tradition is generally cited as the country's oldest, running for roughly three thousand years by local telling. The three-storey wooden building, with its distinctive turret and heron statue, has become one of the most recognisable bathhouses in Japan for exactly that reason.
Its look — timber galleries, a red-tiled turret, winding wooden corridors — is widely cited as an inspiration for the bathhouse in Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away, a connection Hayao Miyazaki has never confirmed directly but that the town leans into anyway.
Bathe in the honkan itself rather than just photographing the exterior — the interior baths, split into two separate springs, are the actual point of a visit.
“You can feel the age of the place before you even get in the water — the timber, the creak of the stairs, the whole building leans into it.”