Funaoka Onsen Former Funaokaro

Funaoka Onsen Former Funaokarō — A 1923 Wooden Inn Hidden Beside Kyoto's Most Beloved Bathhouse

Most visitors to Funaoka Onsen in Kyoto's northern Murasakino district come for the bath. They pass through the curved karahafu gable, slip off their shoes beneath the carved coffered ceiling of the dressing hall, and head for the electric tubs and cypress outdoor pool that have made this sentō a pilgrimage site for bath enthusiasts. Few notice that the wooden two-story building rising to the west of the bathhouse is a separately registered cultural property in its own right — and the original reason the whole complex exists.

The Former Funaokarō (Kyū-Funaokarō) is what remains of the ryokan inn that opened on this site in 1923. Built by Ōno Matsunosuke, a garden-stone merchant from nearby Kamigamo, it served diners and overnight guests until the family pivoted to a public bathing business after the war. The building survived. Its small banquet rooms, alcoves, and second-floor hall are now preserved as a registered tangible cultural property, designated in July 2003 along with three other structures on the property.

From Ryokan to Sentō: A Quiet Building's Long Story

Ōno Matsunosuke's original vision in 1923 (Taishō 12) was a culinary inn, the kind of establishment Kyoto's textile merchants from nearby Nishijin patronized for entertaining clients. The Funaokarō opened with a wooden main hall to the west, a brick bathhouse to the east, and connecting corridors between them. Guests could dine in a private room, retire upstairs, and bathe before sleeping. Seven years later, in 1930 (Shōwa 5), the inn building underwent renovations that produced the configuration registered today.

The pivot to public bathing came in stages. The second-generation owner, Ōno Goichirō, took a particular interest in the bath side of the operation. Kyoto's geology in that era was uncooperative — drilling deep enough to find true hot-spring water was beyond the technology available — so in 1933 Goichirō installed an electric bath instead, said to be the first of its kind in Japan, and secured permission to call the facility a "special hot spring." The brick bathhouse had already been rebuilt in reinforced concrete the year before. War, fuel shortages, and economic hardship eventually pushed the family out of the inn business altogether, and from 1947 the establishment operated as a straightforward public bathhouse.

The ryokan rooms were no longer needed for paying guests. Rather than tear them down, however, the Ōno family kept the wooden main building intact. That decision, made out of attachment rather than commercial calculation, is the reason a Taishō-era inn interior still exists at the back of a working Kyoto bathhouse.

Why It Was Registered

When the Agency for Cultural Affairs added the Funaokarō to its registry on July 1, 2003, it cited a single criterion: the building contributes to Japan's historical landscape. Registration number 26-0155 was granted under the category of tertiary-sector industrial architecture, the same classification applied to other surviving inns, shops, and entertainment buildings of the prewar era.

The official description is restrained. The building, the entry reads, sits immediately west of the dressing hall and bathhouse. It is wooden, two stories, and composed of three parts: an entrance section, a main wing, and a north wing. The first floor of the main wing holds small private rooms; the second floor opens into a wider banquet hall. The north wing carries additional zashiki tatami rooms on both levels. Decoration is described as understated, with attention paid to the trim around the tokonoma alcoves and built-in shelving, the carved ranma transoms above the sliding doors, and the railings of the second-floor verandas.

That spare official language captures what makes the building noteworthy. The Funaokarō is not an architectural showpiece in the manner of a teahouse by a famous designer. It is a working-class luxury — a place where a textile broker, a wholesale grain dealer, or a visiting business client of the 1920s and 1930s could be entertained in rooms that felt elevated but not ostentatious. That kind of mid-tier urban ryokan once stood by the dozens in Kyoto. Almost none remain.

What to Look For

The Former Funaokarō is not on the regular visitor circuit. It sits behind and beside the public areas of the bathhouse, and access to its interior is limited to occasional special openings such as the annual Kyoto Modern Architecture Festival (Kyōto Modan Kenchikusai). When you do get inside, certain details reward close attention.

The 1930 alterations seem to have refined what was already a well-built inn. The Agency for Cultural Affairs entry describes the surrounds of the tokonoma alcoves and built-in shelving, the carved transoms above the sliding doors, and the high railings of the second-floor verandas as worked in a restrained, refined manner. Compared with the showier interiors of teahouse-style ryokan in central Kyoto, the Funaokarō favors quieter timber and joinery, the kind of finish that registers as quality rather than as display.

Upstairs, the broad hall on the second floor of the main wing is the building's most generous space. It was designed for parties: a hall where a dozen or more guests could be seated for a multi-course meal, with sliding panels that could be opened to extend the space or closed to create privacy. The site sits at the south foot of Mount Funaoka, and at the time of construction the wooded slope behind would have remained visible from upper-floor windows in a way that today's denser cityscape can only suggest.

The contrast with the bathhouse next door is what gives the Funaokarō its identity. Inside the bath wing, late-Taishō exuberance bursts out in every direction: cobalt-and-cream majolica tiles on the corridor walls, a wooden ceiling carved with a scene of the young Minamoto no Yoshitsune practicing swordsmanship with the Kurama tengu, transoms representing the Aoi Festival procession and the horse races at Kamigamo Shrine. The Former Funaokarō next door is the calm sibling — wood and paper and shadow, the muted register against which the bath wing's color reads as brilliant.

Visiting and the Wider Funaoka District

The Former Funaokarō's interior is not regularly open. What is open, daily except Tuesday, is the bathhouse it adjoins — and a visit to Funaoka Onsen as a working sentō is the best way to see at least the entry and the wooden facade of the inn building from the outside. The public bath fee covers the dressing hall (also registered) and the bathing rooms (also registered); the inn portion can be glimpsed across the courtyard and corridors.

For the inn interior, look for the Kyoto Modan Kenchikusai held each autumn, when participating buildings open their less-accessible spaces to passport-holders. The festival's printed program lists Funaoka Onsen with notes on which portions are accessible in that year's edition.

The surrounding neighborhood rewards a half-day visit on its own. Mount Funaoka, just behind the property, is a small wooded hill traditionally associated with the southern terminus of Heian-period Kyoto's central axis. Kenkun Shrine on its slopes honors Oda Nobunaga and has become a destination for visitors interested in samurai history and swords. A few minutes' walk south, the great Zen complex of Daitoku-ji opens onto a network of subtemples famed for their gardens. To the east lies Imamiya Shrine, with two centuries-old shops selling grilled aburi-mochi just outside its torii. Further afield, Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion) is about a twenty-minute walk west.

The Kuramaguchi-dōri street that fronts Funaoka Onsen also preserves a handful of converted bathhouse buildings. Sarasa Nishijin, a few hundred meters east, is a café occupying the building Ōno Matsunosuke's family also developed as a smaller neighborhood bath — its majolica tiles and tall ceilings preserved, now framing coffee rather than soap.