温 泉

Hot-spring use in Sengokuhara began in 1736, when water was first channelled here from Owakudani. Hakone's famous old bathing towns lie in the valleys below; up here, at nearly 700 metres, there was little natural spring water, so it had to be carried down from the mountain by hand.

Carrying it was no small matter. Wooden conduits were laid from a raw, steaming volcanic valley, broken and repaired again and again, gradually bringing the water out onto this plateau. That Sengokuhara has hot springs at all is not an accident of nature but the result of almost three hundred years of human effort.

Today the water is still centrally managed and distributed to the inns here: sulphur springs from Owakudani and clear water from Ubako. The springs of Sengokuhara are calcium sulphate (gypsum) springs and simple sulphur springs of the hydrogen-sulphide type. It is the sulphur that gives the water its clouded, milky white.

Through the Taisho and Showa eras, Sengokuhara developed as a Western-style summer retreat rather than a dense hot-spring town, keeping its woods and grasslands intact. The greenery that still separates one inn from the next is the legacy of that choice.

It is this same water that fills our baths. You may notice fine white flecks drifting on the surface — these are yunohana, crystallised mineral deposits from the spring itself, not impurities. Please bathe and enjoy them as they are.