ONSEN
三重県
Yunoyama Onsen
湯の山温泉
Hot Spring
# Yunoyama Onsen
The waters here are alkaline radium springs, a phrase that sounds almost clinical until you lower yourself into them along the gorge of the Mitaki River. Yunoyama sits at the eastern foot of Mount Gozaisho, the highest peak in northern Mie Prefecture, and the place has been known since 718—first discovered, as the old accounts say, and once called Shika-no-Yu, the Deer's Bath. It fell quiet at some point, then was revived during the Genroku era, and a temple, Santakuji, was established in 1705. After the Seinan War, it served as a convalescent station. The history is not dramatic; it accumulates, layer over sediment, like minerals deposited slowly along the riverbed.
Fourteen or so inns and hotels line the valley within the Suzuka Quasi-National Park, and the settlement never tipped into the neon-lit revelry that swallowed certain other hot spring towns. It remained, rather, what the Japanese once called an *okuzashiki*—an inner parlor, a retreat kept at a comfortable distance from the city. Families come here. The Kintetsu Yunoyama Line brings visitors from the direction of Nagoya, and a bus covers the final ten minutes from the station. There is a ropeway up the mountain. There is a modern resort, Aqua Ignis, opened in 2012, with its patisserie and Italian restaurant. These additions do not overwhelm the place; they settle beside it.
To stay several nights would be to find a rhythm shaped by the gorge itself—the sound of the Mitaki River constant beneath your window, the alkaline water softening your skin a little more each evening. You would notice the temple on one walk, the trailhead on another. There is a festival here, the Sōhei Matsuri, recalling warrior monks, though the days between festivals are the ones that define the town. Yunoyama does not insist on your attention. It simply continues, as it has for thirteen centuries, offering its waters to whoever arrives.
The waters here are alkaline radium springs, a phrase that sounds almost clinical until you lower yourself into them along the gorge of the Mitaki River. Yunoyama sits at the eastern foot of Mount Gozaisho, the highest peak in northern Mie Prefecture, and the place has been known since 718—first discovered, as the old accounts say, and once called Shika-no-Yu, the Deer's Bath. It fell quiet at some point, then was revived during the Genroku era, and a temple, Santakuji, was established in 1705. After the Seinan War, it served as a convalescent station. The history is not dramatic; it accumulates, layer over sediment, like minerals deposited slowly along the riverbed.
Fourteen or so inns and hotels line the valley within the Suzuka Quasi-National Park, and the settlement never tipped into the neon-lit revelry that swallowed certain other hot spring towns. It remained, rather, what the Japanese once called an *okuzashiki*—an inner parlor, a retreat kept at a comfortable distance from the city. Families come here. The Kintetsu Yunoyama Line brings visitors from the direction of Nagoya, and a bus covers the final ten minutes from the station. There is a ropeway up the mountain. There is a modern resort, Aqua Ignis, opened in 2012, with its patisserie and Italian restaurant. These additions do not overwhelm the place; they settle beside it.
To stay several nights would be to find a rhythm shaped by the gorge itself—the sound of the Mitaki River constant beneath your window, the alkaline water softening your skin a little more each evening. You would notice the temple on one walk, the trailhead on another. There is a festival here, the Sōhei Matsuri, recalling warrior monks, though the days between festivals are the ones that define the town. Yunoyama does not insist on your attention. It simply continues, as it has for thirteen centuries, offering its waters to whoever arrives.