Photo by Panoramio upload bot, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
🇯🇵 Japan · Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture
Photo by Panoramio upload bot, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
🇯🇵 Japan · Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture
♨ Temperature
90°C
⛰ Altitude
—
⚗ pH
—
💧 TDS
—
🌊 Flow rate
—
📅 Established
Traditionally said to have been discovered around 1,800 years ago
✓ Verified on 2026-07-28
Yunomine Onsen is a small thermal spring village in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture, on the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route, traditionally said to have been discovered around 1,800 years ago. For over a thousand years, pilgrims have bathed here to purify themselves before worshipping at Kumano Hongu Taisha shrine. Its source water, high in sulfur, sodium, and hydrogen carbonate, reaches 90°C. The village's Tsuboyu bath, a tiny wooden bathhouse fitting one or two people, was inscribed in 2004 as part of the UNESCO World Heritage 'Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range,' making it the only hot spring bath in the world with its own UNESCO World Heritage listing. A separate spring, Yuzutsu, is used to boil onsen tamago (hot spring eggs).
Yunomine Onsen is traditionally said to have been discovered around 1,800 years ago, making it one of Japan's oldest thermal spring systems. For over 1,000 years, pilgrims on the Kumano Kodo have bathed in its waters as a purification ritual before worshipping at Kumano Hongu Taisha; the Tsuboyu bath was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage component in 2004.
Pilgrims on the Kumano Kodo traditionally bathe in Yunomine's waters as a purification rite before worshipping at Kumano Hongu Taisha; a legend tied to the Tsuboyu bath, in which a military commander with an incurable illness was healed by the waters, is retold in kabuki plays and religious texts.
Websitewww.tb-kumano.jp/en/places/yunomine/
AddressHongu-cho Yunomine, Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan