Photo by Totti, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
🇯🇵 Japan · Ureshino, Saga Prefecture, Kyushu
Photo by Totti, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
🇯🇵 Japan · Ureshino, Saga Prefecture, Kyushu
♨ Temperature
87°C
⛰ Altitude
—
⚗ pH
—
💧 TDS
—
🌊 Flow rate
—
📅 Established
713
✓ Verified on 2026-07-28
Ureshino Onsen, in southern Saga Prefecture, is regarded as one of Japan's 'Top Three Hot Springs for Beautiful Skin.' The Hizen no Kuni Fudoki, an early Nara-period regional record completed in 713, already describes it as a spring that heals illness. Its water is a sodium bicarbonate and chloride spring with a source temperature of roughly 85-90°C. The town flourished as a post town on the Nagasaki Kaido during the Edo period, and its Shiotazu district, with preserved Edo-era architecture, was designated an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings in 2005.
The Hizen no Kuni Fudoki, completed in 713, already records this spring as healing illness, making Ureshino one of the earliest documented onsen in Japan. Its name is traditionally linked to a legend involving Empress Jingu, who is said to have exclaimed 'ureshii' (happy) upon soldiers' wounds healing there.
Ureshino developed as a prosperous post town on the Nagasaki Kaido trade route during the Edo period, and the preserved Shiotazu district reflects that era's architecture. The 19th-century German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold is documented to have bathed in the town's waters, and a public bathhouse, Siebold-no-Yu, is named after him.