Factbook

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    The commercial connections between Japan’s publishing industry and Onsen (hot springs) go back a long way and are highly creative[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Besides having thousands of publishing companies, Japan also boasts more than 26,000 hot springs and thousands of resorts and hotels with dedicated thermal baths and hot springs, known as onsen. 

    According to official data, these resorts and hotels welcome guests for more than 137 million nights each year. This has created a significant opportunity for publishers who have been publishing dedicated guidebooks since at least the 1850s, to meet the information needs of both tourists and resorts by promoting and distinguishing these locations by throwing light on their attractive and desirable features. 

    Books about tojiba, places for recuperation, have been published since short trips to hot springs first became popular and practical, for some, in Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868). 

    Two well-known examples of publications from the Edo Period are Ryoko yojinshu by Yasumi Keizan and Azumakoakindokagami edited by Ko Ryozan, published in 1810 and 1855 respectively. 

    Japanese publishers employed a creative approach when ranking hot springs and resorts by using a system known as banzuke. This bestows on these locations the same titles used to grade and rank sumo wrestlers. Such titles as Yokozuna, grand champion, for example.

    These types of publishing strategies were deployed in Japan long before the famous Michelin restaurant guide was published in 1900, which awards and ranks restaurants with stars. 

    Japan’s early hot spring publications also included traditional woodblock prints of popular resorts by renowned artists, like Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). These often included kimono-wearing women enjoying themselves as well as maps and illustrations of inns, rivers, scenic views and mountains. 

    The development of Japan’s railways in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) made much of Japan accessible for local tourists and travelers.  And by Japan’s Taisho Period (1912-1916) guidebooks covering hot springs throughout Japan had been published. 

    Unsurprisingly, hot springs have featured in many important books by leading Japanese authors. Two important examples are Botchan by Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) and Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972). Snow Country, set at an onsen, is probably the best known of these. 

    These books have had a major impact. Dogo Onsen on the Japanese island Shikoku, which was featured in the novel by Soseki, for instance, became the inspiration for Aburaya, the spiritual bathhouse featured in Hayao Miyazaki’ s internationally acclaimed animation Spirited Away. The Japanese Imperial family has stayed at this hot spring. As a result, Dogo Onsen, one of Japan’s oldest hot spring resorts, has been designated a National Important Cultural Property. It has also been awarded 3 stars by the Michelin Green Guide. 

    Snow Country, set in a different region of Japan known for its heavy snowfall, helped Kawabata become the first Japanese person to win the Nobel Prize In Literature in 1968. 

    Another Japanese author who is often used to promote tourism and hot springs, is Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933). Known for his children’s book The Night on the Milky Way Train, he was born and brought up in Iwate Prefecture where monuments, museums, trains and hot springs are promoted to visitors as a heady cocktail of beauty, relaxation and fantasy.

    The commercial connections between Japan’s publishing industry and Onsen (hot springs) go back a long way and are highly creative Posted by Richard Nathan
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    50 years before the first Michelin Guide, Tokyo already had a popular guidebook for its foodies[UPDATED: 4-14-2019]

    It has been widely reported that for more than a decade Tokyo has had more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in the world. But what isn’t generally known is that Tokyo, or Edo as it was previously called, had its own guidebooks for Japanese gourmets long before the two French industrialists behind the famous Michelin Guidebook were even born.

    These included Edo Shuhan Tebikikusa, The Pocket Guide to Eating and Drinking in Edo, a copy of which resides at the British Museum library in London.

    Some of these Japanese guidebooks mimicked the approach taken at the time to rank Sumo wrestlers of varying stature grading eating and drinking establishments with similar terminology, as opposed to awarding stars as the Michelin Guidebooks currently do. 

    The Pocket Guide to Eating and Drinking in Edo, published in 1848, lists the names and addresses of 594 restaurants, as well as specialist sushi, soba and eel restaurants in Edo. The guide, like its modern counterparts, was selective – only including, for example, 90 eel specialists from a possible pool of around one thousand or more.

    Japan and Edo may have been isolated from the rest of the world at the time of the publication of The Pocket Guide, but Edo was one of the world’s largest and most literate cities with a strong publishing culture and a very vibrant nightlife.

    The first Michelin Guide was published 52 years later in 1900. At this time there were only a few thousand cars in France, so in order to encourage the French to buy cars and drive across France, two brothers launched the Michelin Guide, which initially focused exclusively on France. The first issue was distributed free to encourage people to buy cars and tyres made by the brothers’ company, Michelin, which they had set up a decade earlier in 1889.

    In the 2018 Guide, Tokyo has the most Michelin-starred restaurants with 234 – ahead of Osaka with 96 and Paris with 92. These are the three leading cities among the 28 countries that the guide currently covers.

    Given all this, it is perhaps not surprising that in 2013 Japanese cuisine, Washoku, was added by the United Nations’ organization UNESCO to The Representative List of The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Other Japanese items included on this UNESCO’s list are Kabuki, Noh and ritual rice planting.

    50 years before the first Michelin Guide, Tokyo already had a popular guidebook for its foodies Posted by Richard Nathan