Takegawara Onsen

One Bathhouse, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since 2004

Takegawara Onsen (竹瓦温泉, Takegawara Onsen) stands at 16-23 Motomachi, Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, a Showa-period building entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 9 June 2004. It is a registered property rather than a designated one.

The quantity is one building. The owner is Beppu City.

The structure is timber, two-storeyed, tiled, with a floor area of 712 square metres. The date field reads early Showa and the year field 1938.

Three Parts, Three Roofs

Within one building, the parts are built differently.

The Agency records that the centre is hip-and-gable and two-storeyed.

The bath projects to the east as a single-storeyed part, and the hipped single-storeyed part on the west holds the sand bath.

Hip-and-gable and 2-storeyed at the centre, hipped and single-storeyed on the west, and a projecting single-storeyed bath on the east: 3 parts, each of its own form.

The Agency calls this an outward form full of variety. The difference between the roofs is set down as what marks it from outside.

At the Kinosaki ropeway summit station, the platform roof is vaulted and only the west is flat: a division in two. Here there are three.

A Great Matted Room Above, with Alcove and Shelves

The floor above the bathing rooms is laid out as a formal room.

The Agency records rest rooms and changing rooms on the lower floor, and on the upper a great matted room with an alcove and shelves.

The alcove and shelves are the fittings that mark a room as formal in a Japanese house.

At the Old University Bath, a changing room lies south and the bath north: single-storeyed, and given over to bathing alone.

Here the building works on two levels, changing and resting below, the great room above. One bathes, and then passes the time upstairs.

Alcove and shelves belong to the formal rooms of dwellings. In a public bath, the fittings of a reception room appear.

A Sand Bath in the Western Range

Beside the room for bathing in hot water stands one for bathing in sand.

The Agency records that the hipped single-storeyed part on the west holds the sand bath.

In such a bath one is buried in warmed sand. The room is made differently from one built for hot water.

The bath on the east and the sand bath on the west face one another across the two-storeyed centre.

The Old University Bath has one bathing room, with a raised roof above to let the steam out.

Here there are two ways of bathing, each with its own room. The floor area of 712 square metres follows from that arrangement.

Visiting

The building stands at 16-23 Motomachi, Beppu City, Oita Prefecture, owned by the city.

The Agency notes a porch at the front under an undulating gable, its barge-boards curving up at the centre.

It closes that the building is weighty and richly made, and stands as a symbol of the hot spring town.

At 712 square metres it is more than 4 times the 155 square metres of the Old University Bath. Two public baths, and their scale far apart.

The city owns this working bath, so opening and terms of bathing follow the owner's arrangements. Check before travelling.