On the Development of the Ryokan (Japanese style inn) in Beppu Spa : from the middle Edo era to the early Meiji period.

Abstract

It can be presumed that twenty one Ryokans (Japanese style inns) had been established in Beppu Spa during Bunka period (1804-1818), most of them located along Kokura road. After the late Edo era, inns and a pleasure quarter seem to have been built along the lower area of Nagare-kawa river, where there were Shio-yu (a beach spa) and a harbor near Nagori-bashi bridge. The Beppu Port (est. 1871) made Beppu Spa, as a pleasure quarter, more active, whereas only nineteen Ryokans were newly settled in around 1877, when the inns were built also along the lower Nagare-kawa as well as in around 1888.