By Ines Keane
Most hot-spring towns give you one big bath and a lobby. Kinosaki gives you the street.
Where it is
Wikipedia places Kinosaki in Hyogo Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan side, and says it was a town in its own right until 1 April 2005, when it merged with neighbouring towns into the city of Toyooka. A second Wikipedia page puts Toyooka in the north of the prefecture, with 78,348 residents in March 2022. The same page says Toyooka lies entirely inside the San’in Kaigan Geopark. For the Kinosaki district alone, Wikipedia gives an estimated 3,778 residents in October 2010. It is small enough to cross on foot in minutes.
The seven baths
Wikipedia says the town has a history of 1,300 years and names seven public baths: Kouno-yu, Mandara-yu, Goshono-yu, Ichino-yu, Yanagi-yu, Jizou-yu and Satono-yu. A promotional travel guide, Live Japan, lists the same seven with slightly different romanisation (Kono-Yu, Mandara-Yu, Goshono-Yu, Yanagi-Yu, Satono-Yu, Jizo-Yu, Ichino-Yu). We show both and do not pick between them. The guide adds that willows line the Otani River area, and that the name of Yanagi-yu means “willow bath”.
Yukata and wooden sandals
Wikipedia says many ryokan guests receive a pass to all seven baths and that visitors commonly walk the town in yukata, which saves changing clothes at each bath. Live Japan adds geta, wooden sandals, to the picture. Our reading: the street is the point. The baths are stops along it.
A writer’s three weeks
Wikipedia records that in 1913 the writer Shiga Naoya stayed in Kinosaki for three weeks, and that the stay inspired his short story “Kinosaki ni te”. A Kinosaki Literary Museum, which the same page says covers the writers of the town, keeps that history on show.
Straw and crab
Live Japan says mugiwara zaiku, straw craft, began here about 300 years ago. The Kinosaki Straw Craft Museum, it says, holds about 40 contemporary works and 200 antiques. Wikipedia adds that the museum runs a straw-craft workshop. For food, Wikipedia names snow crab, Tajima beef and onsen-boiled eggs as local specialities, and Live Japan gives the crab season as November to March. That puts the town’s busiest eating weeks in the cold months.
Up the hill
A ropeway at the far end of the street climbs to a temple viewpoint. The two sources do not agree on the mountain: Wikipedia says Mt. Taishi and names the temple Onsenji, while Live Japan says Mt. Daishiyama and gives a ride of about seven minutes. Same hill, probably, two spellings. That is our reading, not either source’s claim.
The bag town next door
Toyooka’s older trade is bags. The Visit Kinosaki tourism site says Toyooka has about 1,200 years of bag making and calls it the backbone of Japan’s handbag industry. Traditional bags are wicker trunks, yanagi-gori, woven from koriyanagi willow, which it says grows in the wetlands along the Maruyama River and across the Toyooka Basin. The page says the baskets breathe well in humid weather and are both durable and light.
Heavy snow and limited farmland, it explains, left people with spare labour in slow seasons, so many took up weaving as a side trade in the Edo period. It reports prizes for Toyooka bags at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and a silver prize for a new line of wicker goods at the 1900 Paris Exposition. A downtown Kaban Street, about a 13-minute walk from JR Toyooka Station, sells modern bags and has bag-shaped benches and mailboxes.
Storks, briefly
Wikipedia says the oriental white stork became extinct in the wild in Japan in the 1970s. Toyooka began a captive breeding programme, the first captive-bred chick hatched in 1989, five birds were released in 2005, and by June 2015 there were 72 wild storks in the city.
Dates in order
- 1913: Shiga Naoya’s three-week stay, according to Wikipedia.
- 1 April 2005: Kinosaki merges into Toyooka, according to Wikipedia.
- 1893, 1900, 1904: exhibition prizes for Toyooka bags, according to the Visit Kinosaki tourism site.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia (two pages); a promotional travel guide, Live Japan; and the Visit Kinosaki tourism site. No museum or municipal page was read.
What we left out
Fares, admission, opening days and times, and the founding legends attached to the first spring, which we did not use.
Quick answers
How many public baths does Kinosaki Onsen have? Seven, according to Wikipedia and a travel guide, though the two romanise the names differently.
Why do people walk Kinosaki in yukata? Wikipedia says it spares visitors from changing clothes at each bath, and that many ryokan guests receive a pass to all seven.
When is crab season in Kinosaki? A promotional travel guide gives November to March.
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Roam first. Shop later.