Mukaitaki

A timber inn in the Higashiyama valley

Mukaitaki is a hot-spring inn at Yumoto in Higashiyamamachi, Aizuwakamatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture, where four buildings raised between the 1890s and about 1935 were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 20 December 1996. The property belongs to Mukaitaki Co., Ltd.

The four carry Fukushima registration numbers 07-0001 to 07-0004. They were entered in the first year the registration system operated, and the inn describes itself as the first property registered under it.

The site slopes down to the Yugawa river. The entrance building stands on the road, guest wings follow around an inner garden, and the hanare stands apart at the back. Because the ground drops, moving through the inn means going up and down stairs and corridors rather than along a single floor.

From a domain rest house to an inn

Mukaitaki began as a bathing rest house known in the Edo period as Kitsune-yu, the fox bath. The Hirata family took over what had been a rest house designated by the Aizu domain and started running it as an inn in 1873.

The buildings did not arrive together. The guest wing holding the Kagetsu and Ume rooms dates from the 1890s or early 1900s, the entrance building and the hanare from the early Taisho years between 1912 and 1925, and the guest wing with the conference room and the Kiku room from about 1935. The inn grew along the valley over some forty years.

Criteria differ by building. The entrance was listed for contributing to the historic landscape; the other three as models of design. What the road sees and what only a guest sees were judged on different grounds.

The garden is separately listed, as a Registered Monument in the scenic category.

A Tokyo master carpenter and Aizu craftsmen

The useful question at Mukaitaki is who built what. The hanare went up with the entrance building, under Tatsugoro Honma, a master carpenter of Aizuwakamatsu. It holds connected rooms in the shoin manner with an alcove and staggered shelves, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs calls it the building the others here were measured against.

The guest wing with the Kagetsu and Ume rooms is said to have been built by a master carpenter brought from Tokyo, while its fittings came from Kiyohachi Yanaka, a joiner of Aizu. Tokyo carpentry and local joinery sit side by side inside one building.

The guest wing with the conference room and the Kiku room is three storeys of timber covering 360 square metres, with rooms in the sukiya manner and a Western-style conference room under one roof. For about 1935, mixing the two in a single wing was what inn architecture was doing.

The entrance building is the largest of the four at 636 square metres. A broad Irimoya-zukuri hipped-and-gabled roof faces the road, a large hall occupies the upper floor, and the Kitsune-yu bath is here too.

Visiting

Mukaitaki is a working inn. The interior is space for staying guests, and it is not open to people who simply want to look around. Whether day bathing or any form of tour is offered varies, so check the inn's own site before you go.

The exteriors can be seen from the road through Higashiyama Onsen. What reads from there is the roof of the entrance building and the roofs of the guest wings stacked behind it. Photography from the public road is unrestricted, but be mindful of guests arriving and leaving.

The address is 200 Kawamukai, Yumoto, Higashiyamamachi, Aizuwakamatsu City. From JR Aizu-Wakamatsu Station the town loop bus runs to Higashiyama Onsen. By car, take the Aizu-Wakamatsu interchange of the Ban-etsu Expressway and head for Higashiyama Onsen.

This information was checked on 17 September 2026.