Jikkoku sits in the gorge that the Ōyanagawa river has carved into the mountains of southern Yamanashi, and it wears its remoteness without ceremony. To reach it you take a local bus from the Kajikazawaguchi station on the Minobu Line, and the road narrows as the valley deepens. Several distinct mineral springs surface in a remarkably small area — among them the iron-rich calcium sulfate cold mineral spring that feeds Yama no Yu — as though the geology here had compressed a whole catalogue of waters into one tight fold of rock.

The place carries a long memory. Its founding legend reaches back to the Sengoku period, invoking the warrior Minamoto no Yoshimitsu and the whispered counsel of tengu — mountain spirits whose authority once seemed as real as the stone underfoot. That layered past was nearly erased when a landslide in the Taishō era buried much of the settlement. For decades the springs lay dormant, until 1960 brought restoration. Copper and silver and gypsum were once mined from these slopes, and you sense that the earth here has always been giving something up, reluctantly, to those willing to stay.

And staying is perhaps the point. A few nights in a valley like this begin to reshape one's sense of proportion. The river moves through its gorge beneath suspension bridges with names drawn from dragon mythology — Ryūjin-bashi, Ryūsen-bashi — and five waterfalls mark the hiking course along its banks. But the real rhythm is quieter than any of that: the mineral water drawn up from deep underground, the slow work of therapeutic bathing, the particular stillness of a place that disappeared once and chose, patiently, to return.