ONSEN
岩手県
Matsukawa Onsen
松川温泉
Hot Spring
# Matsukawa Onsen
The water is milky white, heavy with sulfur, and it has been rising from this ground since at least 1743, when the spring was first opened for bathing. Before that, a mountain ascetic named Itō Sainen is said to have found it sometime in the early eighteenth century. The location itself seems to resist casual arrival: the uppermost reaches of the Matsukawa river, deep within the Towada-Hachimantai National Park, surrounded by primeval forests of beech and oak. Only two inns remain here now. That number tells you something. This is not a place that expanded to meet demand; it stayed the size the valley would allow.
Both ryokan — Kyōunsō, which opened in 1960 as a publicly managed lodge and belongs to the association dedicated to preserving secluded hot springs, and Matsukawasō, established a year later — offer outdoor baths where the milky water meets open air. The sulfur is said to ease neuralgia and rheumatism, ailments that reward not a single dip but repeated immersion over days. A tōjiba, a place of bathing cure, operates on a different clock than a resort. You soak, you rest, you soak again. Nearby, almost improbably, stands the site of Japan's first commercial geothermal power plant, and a small museum explores the connection between the heat beneath your feet and the water you sit in. The earth here is visibly at work.
To stay several nights at Matsukawa would be to settle into a rhythm shaped by the forest and the river and the slow hours between baths. Wild animals share the surrounding slopes. The woods produce mountain vegetables and mushrooms in their respective seasons. There is very little else to do, which is precisely the point — the milky water, the sulfur on your skin, the quiet of a valley where two inns and a river are enough.
The water is milky white, heavy with sulfur, and it has been rising from this ground since at least 1743, when the spring was first opened for bathing. Before that, a mountain ascetic named Itō Sainen is said to have found it sometime in the early eighteenth century. The location itself seems to resist casual arrival: the uppermost reaches of the Matsukawa river, deep within the Towada-Hachimantai National Park, surrounded by primeval forests of beech and oak. Only two inns remain here now. That number tells you something. This is not a place that expanded to meet demand; it stayed the size the valley would allow.
Both ryokan — Kyōunsō, which opened in 1960 as a publicly managed lodge and belongs to the association dedicated to preserving secluded hot springs, and Matsukawasō, established a year later — offer outdoor baths where the milky water meets open air. The sulfur is said to ease neuralgia and rheumatism, ailments that reward not a single dip but repeated immersion over days. A tōjiba, a place of bathing cure, operates on a different clock than a resort. You soak, you rest, you soak again. Nearby, almost improbably, stands the site of Japan's first commercial geothermal power plant, and a small museum explores the connection between the heat beneath your feet and the water you sit in. The earth here is visibly at work.
To stay several nights at Matsukawa would be to settle into a rhythm shaped by the forest and the river and the slow hours between baths. Wild animals share the surrounding slopes. The woods produce mountain vegetables and mushrooms in their respective seasons. There is very little else to do, which is precisely the point — the milky water, the sulfur on your skin, the quiet of a valley where two inns and a river are enough.