Published in Nikkei Asia 9/9/2022
BEPPU, Japan — Ichiro is the big boss around here. Brought up in the hot springs mecca of Beppu, on the Japanese island of Kyushu, he has never left his hometown. He has his pick of the local females and at mealtimes his favorite food is brought to him without fail.
Right now, he is gazing at me with a 1,000-meter stare, his mouth hanging slightly open in a cynical grin. “Who the hell you do you think you are?” he seems to be saying. I fix him with my hardest, most Clint Eastwood-like squint but, not being a 5-meter Asian crocodile, I quickly lose the staring contest.
Altogether, there are over 40 alligators and crocodiles residing in the Oniyama jigoku (“Devil Mountain Hell”). This venerable tourist attraction is an adjunct to the Oniyama Hotel, a large hot spring hotel with several sizeable baths, some in the open air.
Strictly speaking, Ichiro should be called Ichiro 2 since he took on the name of an illustrious predecessor, rather as Kabuki actors and other exponents of Japanese traditional arts sometimes do. Ichiro 1, whose skin hangs from the wall of the information room, started his career in 1923 and lived to the ripe old age of 72. At 7 meters in length, he would have made his successor look scrawny.
Dinner time!
There are other “hells” to sample in the hot springs area of Beppu, some offering eggs and cakes cooked in the scalding water. I visited all eight of them and have the stamps on my pamphlet to prove it, but the Oniyama reptile garden is by far the best.
Once upon a time Beppu was an international destination, with cruise ships docking on their way to Yokohama. In 1935, Beppu was really buzzing, with some 6,500 foreigners staying in standard hotels and ryokans (Japanese-style hotels) and more than half a million people using the railway station.
Among the famous visitors over the years were Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, George Bernard Shaw, the Vienna Boys’ Choir, Helen Keller, the blind and deaf American disability rights activist, and James Bond.
Yes, Ian Fleming, 007’s creator, stopped off in Beppu when conducting research for You Only Live Twice. In the novel, he has Bond enjoy a meal of fugu (blowfish) with Japanese spy chief Tiger Tanaka and tour the hells, which he found satisfyingly sinister — “each bubbling, burping nest of volcanic fumaroles was more horrific than the last.”
At the “Lake of Blood” hell
There are two important figures behind the branding of Beppu as a tourist destination. The first is the 13th century itinerant monk, Ippen. Statues and images of him are everywhere in Beppu’s Kannawa hot springs district.
Ippen appears to have been something of a showman, staging ecstatic religious ceremonies with music, dance and groups of nuns stripping off. According to the legend, he arrived in what is now Beppu and encouraged the local people not to fear the geysers, which were considered a curse on the land, but to develop them into health-enhancing hot springs.
Images of Ippen are everywhere
The second influencer was a remarkable entrepreneur called Kumahachi Aburaya who was born before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which thrust Japan into the modern world, and passed away in 1935. Aburaya made a fortune speculating in the Osaka rice market, then lost every yen in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895. Broke at the age of 35, he spent several years wandering in the United States, then returned to Japan and settled in Beppu.
Sensing the market potential, he opened the Kamenoi Ryokan in 1911. Now called the Kamenoi Hotel, it still exists. Aburaya also set up a tourist bus company, complete with young women in uniforms as tour guides.
A master of public relations, he came up with this killer slogan: “For mountains, it’s Fuji; for the sea, it’s the Inland Sea; for hot springs, it’s Beppu.” The man born in the still-feudal mid-19th century had anticipated the era of mass tourism.
During the post-war American occupation of Japan, there was a strong U.S. military presence in Beppu. Japanese jazz legend Toshiko Akiyoshi got her start hammering out blues and bop in the rough-and-tumble bars of Beppu — quite a contrast to the classical exercises the young girl had been accustomed to in her comfortable home in colonial Manchuria.
When Fleming showed up in 1962 with journalist friends Richard Hughes (“Dikko Henderson” in the novel and film) and Torajiro Saito (“Tiger Tanaka”), Beppu was in its prime, attracting 5 million visitors a year. The absolute peak was marked in 1973, when 13 million people – the equivalent of more than 10% of the Japanese population — swarmed to Beppu, a city of 130,000 inhabitants.
Bond in Kyushu
The growth could not last, and it did not. Overseas holidays became popular and attractions like Tokyo Disneyland offered stiff competition. Yet, Beppu’s popularity remained at a high level throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
One crucial element in the prosperity of Beppu and other resort towns was the custom of blue chip companies taking large numbers of employees on short holidays during which they would eat and drink to excess and let their hair down in all sorts of ways. Hot springs were a favorite destination, and there was a boom in the construction of hotels that could cope with sudden influxes of squadrons of office workers. It took the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in the 1990s to end that.
Many resort towns never really recovered. Beppu has. Tourism — mostly domestic at the moment — continues. The company trip is no longer a thing, but now we have offsite meetings and “workations,” which are smaller scale, but not very different. More to the point, Aburaya’s slogan is still effective. Japanese people love hot spring baths, and Beppu remains a go-to location.
I can testify that taking a late night bath under the stars at the Oniyama Hotel makes a good day perfect. When Japan finally reopens to foreign tourism after the COVID-19 pandemic, expect a flood of Asian tourists keen to bask in the waters at a bargain price, thanks to the weak yen.
New developments are underway too. I heard good reports about Beppu’s Asia Pacific University, an international branch of Kyoto’s Ritsumeikan University. The student body and faculty are 50% foreign, and local observers are impressed by the quality of both.
Oita Airport is a 30-minute drive away, with the flight to Tokyo taking 90 minutes. One businessman I met spends three days a week in Tokyo and the rest in Beppu, his hometown. I can understand that. The food is cheaper and probably better. I had my doubts about eating Italian in Beppu, but the food at Otto e Sette, ingredients all locally sourced, was superb. The owner-chef, who has received numerous awards, uses vitamin-rich hot spring water in his cooking.
The family-run Ono eaterie, also in the Kannawa district, offers a contrasting approach, all bustle and energy. Nominally a yakitori (roast chicken on skewers) joint, it offers most of the dishes you would expect in an izakaya (the Japanese equivalent of a tapas bar).
If you want a more sophisticated meditative experience, you can always spend an afternoon or longer in Yufuin, a greener, cooler, quieter place half an hour away by car. Considered the Kyushu equivalent of Karuizawa, the summer getaway for wealthy Tokyoites, it attracts film and art world types.
Some seaside towns in Britain are amongst the most deprived areas in the country. Everyone has left who has the ability to do so. Beppu is not like that at all. The era of corporate tourism may be gone for good and some of the hells underwhelming compared to modern day attractions. Nonetheless, the regional pride of the inhabitants is palpable. They strongly believe their town is a great place to live. While that remains the case, it will be.
Just ask Ichiro
Satisfaction guaranteed