Storm clouds clear around Mt. Fuji Photograph © Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS

Japanese Ryokan
By Arthur Golden

For westerners whose idea of luxury is usually tied up with crescent drives, liveried servants, and grand stairways, a first-class Japanese inn may seem almost perverse in its simplicity and understatement. Often the entrance is nothing more than a sliding door at the end of a stone path, or perhaps a broad opening along one side of a cobbled alleyway. Inside, the room for which you may have paid $800 a night is defined by clean, uncomplicated lines: rectilinear straw mats; a table surrounded by cushions; a recessed alcove with a hanging scroll as centerpiece. Unlike even the most basic American inn these days, the ryokan offers no swimming pool or weight room; no chocolates on your pillow; no concierge for help with your dinner reservations. It is less a full-service hotel than a kind of spa for the senses.

True, the room may be bare almost to the point of minimalism; but just as we can best see a flower in all its beauty when it rises out of the simplest dish, the surroundings truly do take on a kind of purity: the straw smell of the tatami mats on the floor; the clack of the sliding door against its stop; the crisp cleanliness of the inn's cotton robe against your skin. While the maid serves green tea and perhaps a sweet on a leaf-shaped wooden dish, your eyes rest themselves beyond the paper screens slid open to reveal the beautiful outdoor scene. It may be a garden, miniature in scale, where stepping-stones lead to a carp pond an arm's reach away; it may be a vista of cliffs with the sea beyond, or snow-capped Fuji in the distance. But it is always utterly private, no threat of human intrusion. Tranquility and repose are the inn's principal offerings.

And then there is the bath: sometimes separate public baths for men and women, but often a private bath of cedar in a little cedar room, where drops of moisture from the steam glisten on the ceiling. You wash first, crouched upon a tiny wooden stool on the tile floor. When you finally venture to put your foot in, the water is so hot you are unable to bear it for long—so hot, in fact, that when you take your foot back out, you seem to be wearing a red sock. Over the course of a determined minute or two, you lower yourself into the water, which pours over the side in a smooth tongue onto the floor; afterward, when you rinse with cold water, you will feel that same glow that follows a massage.

And of course, dinner—which, along with breakfast, is included in the price of your room. Around dusk the maids come to arrange the table: lacquered chopsticks on a porcelain rest; beer glasses and sake cups; the steaming towel, rolled tight as a cigar, to wipe your hands and face. The food comes, dish by dish on a variety of ceramics and lacquerware, in an almost endless succession of delicate tastes. Then the table is cleared, and while you brush your teeth, the futons with their crisp white sheets are laid in the center of the room.

There in the dark, with the straw smell of the mats and the drone of cicadas, you may even struggle to stay awake; not that you aren't tired, but to sleep is to give it all up, to bring on the following morning, when you must leave. Like one of those paradoxes from a Zen fable, solitude can be its own kind of stimulation.

The information in this story was accurate at the time it was published, but we suggest you confirm all details before making travel plans.