Himeno Hotel, Beppu, c. 1930.

The ryokan “Himeno Hotel”, Beppu, c. 1930. As early as the Edo Period (1603-1868), the area boasted eight hot springs and by the end of that period ryokan had already been established along the main highway. Development grew exponentially during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) after Beppu Port was built in 1872. Over the years the city would grew into one of Japan’s most famous onsen resorts. Beppu can claim ten of the eleven types of hot springs that can be found throughout the world. In terms of hot water volume, it is surpassed only by Yellowstone in the U.S.A.

“Beppu from the water at night was a crescent of lights — reflected in a bay that is smooth as glass and surmounted by jagged black hills. Its streets were gay with people even at that hour. Its teahouses blazed with lights and were lively with laughter and song and the twang of the samisen.

“Beppu is the Atlantic City of Japan coupled with what Carlsbad once was, for here are marvelous waters that effect wondrous cures.

“Here are healing springs that bring back lost strength and health; here are soft sands lapped by tepid waters wherein one can lie and bathe and regain lost vitality. Here too are all the amusements that men desire – life and joy and gayety – wine and women, song and laughter, and here are gathered to enjoy these things, the gay young blades from all Japan.

“Its baths are famous, but so are its teahouses. Its climate is alluring, but so are its other attractions. The city is alive day and night with feverish activity of the pleasure seeker. Out of two hundred or more hotels, none has foreign accommodation at present. There was one, the Beppu Hotel, but that has been closed. But the Japanese inns are so delightful, that who would stay elsewhere once he had experienced them?

“… We started out the next morning to see some of these, but a friendly official, who had heard of our arrival came upon us as we left the inn. ‘You are my guests,’ he said politely, ‘and these places you speak of seeing are nothing. With me you shall see all the sights of Beppu.’

“And under his ciceronage we did; beginning with the famous Geisha Bath which few foreigners had seen and ending early the following morning with a burning thirst and an insane desire to have all the ice in the world packed round one’s head.”

– Wandering Feet: Along Well-known Highways and Unfrequented Byways of China and Japan, by James King Steele, 1923

: Exterior view of the ryokan “Himeno Hotel”, Beppu, c. 1930.

: Interior view of the ryokan “Himeno Hotel”, Beppu, c. 1930.