The open-air stone bath at Shirakabe beneath its timber roof, spring water running from a wooden spout, a maple beside it

The Baths · Shirakabe

One Hundred Percent
Spring Water.

Two natures

The water at Shirakabe is one hundred percent spring water, welling up out of the mountain opposite and flowing freely through the baths. It closes gently around the traveller, and restores them.

The great bath at Shirakabe, its rock face formed from the ejecta of ancient submarine volcanoes, the spring water still and steaming

Shirakabe · submarine volcanoes

Rock from an Ancient Seafloor.

The rock face of the Shirakabe bath was formed from the ejecta of a group of submarine volcanoes, the Yugashima Group, which erupted again and again on the deep seabed to the south between roughly 15 and 10 million years ago. It is the second-oldest stratum on the Izu Peninsula.

The same water. Two entirely different faces.

The giant-tree bath at Shirakabe, carved from a single 1,200-year-old tree and lit at night

The giant-tree bath

Carved from a Single Tree of 1,200 Years. Free-Flowing Spring Water.

The giant-tree bath was cut from a single tree of about 1,200 years. It came to Izu by ship from the Republic of Gabon, in West Africa.

The wood is African rosewood, which can no longer be imported or exported under CITES. The bath is fed by the inn's own spring, which flows through it continuously and is neither reheated nor recirculated.

Into the quiet

The hour of the bath is the hour of the inn.

Rooms 111 and 112 each have their own open-air bath, fed by free-flowing spring water.

Reserve