Min'unkaku Ochiairo

What Min'unkaku Ochiairo Is

Min'unkaku Ochiairo (眠雲閣落合樓, read Min'unkaku Ochiairō) is a set of seven timber buildings belonging to a hot spring inn in Yugashima, Izu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, raised for the most part between 1933 and 1937 and placed on the national list of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties. The site occupies the left bank at the point where the Hondani and Nekko rivers meet to form the Kano River, and the seven buildings follow the water: the entrance building, the main building, Min'untei, the rosewood banquet hall, the pantry and staircase building, the residence building with its corridor, and the reception building.

Five of them were registered on 18 November 1999, the remaining two on 9 February 2005. In every case the criterion cited was that the building serves as a model of design. None of this is a museum. Min'unkaku Ochiairo is a working inn, and the registered buildings are still guest rooms, banquet floors and stairwells that people walk through every day.

From a Gold Mine Owner's Base to a Writers' Retreat

The inn dates its founding to 1874. By its own account, Adachi Mitsutoshi, who ran gold mining operations in the Izu hills, established a base where the Hondani and Nekko rivers converge and used it to lodge business associates and guests. The house was first called Min'unrō.

In 1881 Yamaoka Tesshū, a former retainer of the Tokugawa shogunate, stayed here and gave the place the name Ochiairō, meaning the house where the rivers fall together. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database records this renaming as the origin of the present name. Writers followed: Tayama Katai and Shimazaki Tōson, later Kawabata Yasunari and Kitahara Hakushū.

What a visitor sees today came out of a large rebuilding campaign begun in 1933. The entrance building went up first, then the main building, Min'untei, the rosewood banquet hall and the pantry and staircase building. A master carpenter from nearby Ōtaki, Aoki Seihei, directed the work. Around 1935 the innkeeper's residence and the small reception building to its south were added.

The trading name later became Ochiairō Murakami, and on 26 September 2019 the inn reopened after renovation as Ochiairo. The owner is Ochiairou Co., Ltd.

How the Site Is Laid Out

The ground at Min'unkaku Ochiairo slopes from the road down towards the river. A corridor runs east from the entrance building to the residence building, once the innkeeper's own home. Just south of it stands the reception building, a Western-style room barely large enough for a table and chairs.

The main building sits in the southeast corner, closest to the stream. Walking south from there brings you to the rosewood banquet hall, aligned with the old Mochikoshi road, and then, past the pantry and staircase building, to Min'untei at the far southern end. The pantry and staircase building physically joins Min'untei to the banquet hall, and the corridor joins the entrance building to the residence. Much of the complex can be crossed under cover, which is what an inn plan of this period was for.

The Seven Registered Buildings

Dates, structures and floor areas below follow the Agency for Cultural Affairs database.

• Entrance building. 1933. Single-storey timber, Sangawara-buki tiled roof, floor area 80 square metres. Registered 1999.
• Main building. 1933 to 1935. Two-storey timber, copper-sheet roof, floor area 356 square metres. Registered 1999.
• Min'untei. 1933 to 1937. Two-storey timber, tiled roof, floor area 215 square metres. Registered 1999.
• Rosewood banquet hall. 1933 to 1937. Two-storey timber, tiled roof, floor area 378 square metres. Registered 1999.
• Pantry and staircase building. 1933 to 1937. Two-storey timber, tiled roof, floor area 73 square metres. Registered 1999.
• Residence building and corridor. About 1935. Timber, two storeys above ground and one below, tiled roof, floor area 128 square metres; the corridor is single-storey timber with a sheet-iron roof, floor area 20 square metres. Registered 2005.
• Reception building. About 1935. Two-storey timber, tiled roof, floor area 18 square metres. Registered 2005.

All seven are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, numbered from 22-0057 for the entrance building through 22-0098 for the reception building. What makes Min'unkaku Ochiairo worth attention as a group is that the whole sequence survives on one site, each building written in a different register according to what it had to do.

The Name and How to Read It

Min'unkaku Ochiairo is written 眠雲閣落合樓 and read min-un-kaku o-chi-ai-rō. The last character is the older form of 楼, a tower or storeyed building, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs keeps the old form in the registered name. The inn trades today as Ochiairo; for years before that it was Ochiairō Murakami. A search under the inn's name will turn up all three spellings.

One difference between sources is worth flagging. Izu City's own cultural property list splits the two buildings registered in 2005 into "residence building" and "corridor and reception building", while the national database gives them as "residence building and corridor" and "reception building". The count is the same and only the division differs; this site follows the national database.

Visiting and Getting There

The seven buildings of Min'unkaku Ochiairo belong to a working inn and are not open to the general public. Seeing them at close range means staying overnight, and there is no day-use bathing. For guests who are staying, inn staff run a walking commentary on the registered buildings.

The nearest station is Shuzenji on the Izuhakone Railway Sunzu Line, about 35 minutes from Mishima on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen. A free shuttle leaves the north exit of Shuzenji Station at 2:15 p.m., 3:15 p.m., 4:15 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. Reservations must be made 3 days in advance, giving your arrival time.

By public bus, take a Tōkai Bus from stand 5 at the south exit of Shuzenji Station. Get off at Arajuku after about 35 minutes and the walk is about 1 minute; get off at Yugashima Onsenguchi after about 30 minutes and the walk is about 15 minutes. By car it is about 45 minutes from the Nagaizumi-Numazu interchange on the Shin-Tōmei Expressway or the Numazu interchange on the Tōmei Expressway, and parking is available.

Shuttle times and conditions change. Check the Ochiairo website before setting out.