Matsudaya Hotel, Yuda Spa, Yamaguchi Prefecture, c. 1930.

Matsudaya Hotel, Yuda Spa, Yamaguchi Prefecture, c. 1930. The Matsudaya Hotel has a rich history of more than 330 years (and is still open for business today). Several of the leading late Edo period figures directly involved in the Meiji Restoration gathered there to plot the overthrow of the Tokugawa bakufu. There is a legend that a white fox (shiro-gitsune) used to visit Yuda Onsen to heal wounds. You can see in place statues and illustrations of the white fox in various places around the area.

“Ever since our founding during the Edo period, the space we occupy has seen many significant historical events.

“The aspiring men who fought in the dream of the dawn of a new era and led the great achievement of the Meiji Restoration. Matsudaya Hotel is known as the place where they gathered to talk with each other.

“It is a historical cultural property which is said to have been used for bathing at the time when the imperial loyalists of Choshu, Satsuma, and Tosa [including Ito Hirobumi and Saigo Takamori] gathered for secret meetings to overthrow the Shogunate and restoring the Imperial Rule.

“This is the place of the event that changed Japan’s history, where Saigo and Okubo of Satsuma clan, Kido and Ito of Choshu clan, and Sakamoto of the Tosa clan came to Yamaguchi to discuss concrete plans on the Satcho Alliance.”

– Matsudaya Hotel website