Dogo Onsen Honkan

About this place

Dogo Onsen Honkan is the main public bathhouse of Dogo Onsen, a hot spring quarter of the city of Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku, about 2 km from Matsuyama Castle in a straight line. Dogo is counted among the oldest hot springs in Japan and appears in the «Man'yoshu», a poetry collection of the eighth century. The wooden bathhouse was built in 1894 on the initiative of the town's mayor, Isaniwa Yukiya, on three levels to take more bathers, and in 1994 it became the first public bathhouse in Japan named an Important Cultural Property. A private wing, the Yushinden, was added in 1899 for the imperial family. The novelist Natsume Soseki bathed here while teaching in Matsuyama, and his novel «Botchan» made the place famous. The building returned to full use in July 2024 after more than five years of repair work. The three-storey building piles up tiled roofs, wooden balconies and paper screens, topped by a small turret with a red glass window and a white heron figure. A drum is beaten from the turret at set times of day, and in the evening light glows through the screens. Visitors choose between several bathing courses, some with an upstairs rest room, tea and sweets. Guests in cotton yukata wander the covered shopping arcade that runs between the station and the bathhouse.