Ginzan Onsen

Ginzan Onsen is one of the most atmospheric hot-spring towns in Japan - a row of wooden inns three and four storeys high, standing shoulder to shoulder along both banks of the Ginzan River, their façades lit at dusk by gas lamps. It looks like a stage set for the 1920s - the nostalgic Taisho-era mood the town is loved for.

The name means "silver mountain", and the town began as exactly that. It grew up around the Nobesawa silver mine, one of the great mines of early-Edo Japan, and took its name from it. When the silver ran out the population collapsed, and the remote valley survived quietly as a hot-spring cure town - a place people came to soak for their health, served by a handful of bathhouses and small shops, cut off from the world down a single narrow mountain road.

The town you see today was born from disaster. In 1913 a great flood on the Ginzan River swept away almost all the inns, and for years afterwards the springs ran too weak and too cool to recover. The turning point came in 1926, when drilling struck a hot, abundant new source - and the inns rebuilt themselves all at once in the striking Western-influenced wooden style that gives the street its unified look. Roads and bridges followed, finally connecting the once-isolated valley to the outside world.

In 1986 the town passed a townscape preservation ordinance to protect its historic inns and keep the street intact, and the old silver mine itself was designated a National Historic Site the year before. The result is a place that has held its character rather than losing it to modernisation - and that character shifts with the seasons: mountain cherries and wild vegetables in spring, the sound of water and cicadas in summer, blazing foliage and mushroom dishes in autumn, and in winter the snow-lit gas lamps that have made the town famous.

It's a town best enjoyed on foot. Walking trails run out from the hot-spring street along the river to waterfalls and up toward the old mine shafts, ranging from a short twenty-minute stroll to a gentle ninety-minute loop. One note for planners: the trails toward the mine tunnels close over the snowy months, from the first snowfall until the mountain reopens in spring, when the footing is too poor to enter.

The inns are small and popular, and overnight stays - especially in winter - should be booked far in advance.