Wakayama Shirahama Town
A Nanki resort hotel with Shirahama’s superb views and celebrated onsen
Nanki Shirahama Onsen Hotel Kawakyu is an onsen inn and resort hotel in Shirahama, Nishimuro District, Wakayama Prefecture. Its striking architecture won the Togo Murano Prize in 1993, and its ceiling of 22.5-karat gold leaf is recognized by Guinness World Records. In two onsen salons you can soak in a sodium chloride–bicarbonate spring drawn from the source at Shirahama Onsen, one of Japan’s three oldest onsen. The high-temperature sauna offers löyly you pour yourself, and a variety of baths, including a reclining bath and a Silky Bath, invite you to unwind. Musée, a lounge looking out over Tanabe Bay, serves original sweets and drinks. Every room is an ocean-view suite, where you can savor a luxury far removed from everyday life.
An ocean-view bath where, with Tanabe Bay spread out below, you can soak in the waters of Shirahama, one of Japan’s three oldest onsen, with a history of more than 1,350 years. Being wrapped in the sea breeze and the scent of the onsen is a special experience you can only have in Nanki Shirahama. In the Silky Bath, ultra-fine microbubbles envelop your whole body, leaving your skin feeling silky smooth after you step out. The reclining bath lets you lie back and surrender to the buoyancy of the water, easing the strain on joints and muscles so you can relax for a long time. There is also a space styled like the living room of a private residence, where you can work up a sweat on the heated floor while gazing at the flames in the fireplace, and the whole space is rounded off by a Relaxation Living Room where you can linger at leisure with a drink in hand.
Here you will find a large bath made generously of koyamaki, the sacred umbrella pine of Mount Koya, and an open-air bath surrounded by lush forest. The walls of the main bathhouse are decorated with paintings of immortal hermits by the ceramic artist Reizo Aoyama and a classical Chinese poem by Tao Yuanming, while soft indirect lighting creates a dreamlike atmosphere. In the open-air bath, you can become one with nature as you soak in Shirahama’s waters welling up from the earth. With the fragrance of the sacred wood mingling with the onsen, this is a bath of real distinction that you can experience only at Hotel Kawakyu.
A high-temperature dry sauna in the Royal Spa. Because you can pour löyly yourself, you can enjoy aufguss-style waves of heat at your own pace. Its clean, white-toned design blends into the living-room-style spa space. Daylight streams in through large windows, and a fireplace bench with floor heating adds to the refined, hotel-quality setting where you can take your time working up a sweat. Take in the ocean view while you warm yourself through and through.
A wooden barrel sauna in the Yukyu-no-Mori area on the ground floor. The compact space wraps your body in dense, concentrated heat. With no TV, the quiet setting heightens the feeling of taking a sauna in the midst of nature.
The cold plunge in the Royal Spa. After the high-temperature sauna, the cold pulls the body taut and brings your temperature back into balance. It sits alongside the Silky Bath and the reclining bath, so you can cool down in a calm space styled like the living room of a private residence. It is just a short walk from the sauna, making it easy to move between hot and cold.
The cold plunge in the Yukyu-no-Mori area. In a calm, forest-like setting, you can thoroughly cool a body warmed by the sauna and the onsen.
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Irregular Holidays
By car
By train and bus
Shuttle
The free shuttle from Shirahama Station is a loop service that also stops at the group’s other hotels
Visited by the Editor-in-Chief
The Editor-in-Chief visited in person in March 2026
The Royal Spa of Shirahama’s Celebrated Hot Springs and a Setting Sun
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Shirahama Onsen
A cape-top inn with a mixed-gender open-air bath at the water’s edge and natural onsen fed straight from the source
Shirahama Onsen
An ocean-view onsen resort where you soak in water from its own source and watch the sun set over the Pacific
Shirahama Onsen
An onsen inn for Nanki-Shirahama’s celebrated water, with a tatami-floored main bathhouse and generous warm-stone rooms
