The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
Considering the inn experience
Irecently realized that there is a Japanese term that I am familiar with but that many of my Japanese friends didn’t know: “heya-shoku,” which means a full-course meal served in one’s room when staying at a ryokan. This was the first time as far as I could recall that I knew a Japanese word that Japanese people around me didn’t know, apart from some academic, nerdy stuff and perhaps some facts about the town where I live. I’m a Japanophile but not a collector of trivia. This word, though, was one I would have expected anyone to know.
A direct translation of heya-shoku is “room food.” Obviously, it was not a matter of the word being especially complicated. My acquaintances certainly also knew of heya-shoku itself. They just didn’t know that that was what it was called. When I told them that was the term used, they mostly nodded casually, not particularly interested.
There is nothing to excite the imagination in the plain, self-explanatory term, but the indifference of those I spoke to seemed to extend to the practice itself. Recently, ryokan that offer heya-shoku seem to be decreasing, as more inns opt for the greater efficiency of serving guests all together in a dining room. For me, the best part of a ryokan stay is heya-shoku, so I had learned the term in the process of confirming that whatever inn I planned to stay at did in fact bring the meals to rooms. My Japanese cultural informants, on the other hand, felt that where one ate, own room or dining room, was much less important than the quality of the cuisine.
Naturally, heya-shoku would not have much attraction if the food served were mediocre. But if the choice were between a sumptuous heya-shoku meal and an equally magnificent meal elsewhere, heya-shoku surely wins hands down. To my mind, heya-shoku is a vital part of what makes a ryokan a ryokan. Yet there is evidently a disconnect between what I value ryokan-wise and what my Japanese acquaintances do. I can sleep on a futon in my own home, and I can eat delicious Japanese food at any number of restaurants. If heya-shoku was not key, what was the value of ryokan for Japanese people?
There are in fact many different sorts of ryokan allure. Tourism researcher Sylvie Guichard-Anguis notes that compared to Japanese hotels, there are a wide variety of specialized categories of ryokan. Hot-water spas are of course one important type of ryokan, but in addition Guichard-Anguis points to ryokan associated with famous writers, “secret” ryokan, those with thatched roofs, and many more kinds. Particularly from the 1980s, rotenburo outdoor baths became a major tourist draw.
The role of the Okami-san, the manager or wife of the manager, is also a core part of the ryokan “face,” and the primary embodiment of omotenashi hospitality. Guichard-Anguis further posits that Okami-san are the inventors of “Nihon no bi” Japanese beauty, a modern notion that emerged as Japan asserted its own unique aesthetic in the modern world, related to objects and practices such as kimono, calligraphy, flower arrangement and tea ceremony, as well as values such as devotion to family and work. Experiencing Nihon no bi is an essential component of the ryokan sojourn.
Cultural geographer Chris McMorran similarly discusses the role of invention and the popular imagination in ryokan, but takes a somewhat different tack. McMorran has made a study of Kurokawa Onsen in Kumamoto. Kurokawa is an hour’s drive from the nearest train station and is located in a narrow valley without much level land. Until the 1980s, few tourists visited, preferring larger, more modern spas in Beppu, Uchinomaki and Tsuetate. But overnight stays at Kurokawa Onsen doubled between 1989 and 2002 and it is now a well-known tourist destination.
Factors leading to Kurokawa’s success were both external and internal. Japan Railways launched a “Discover Japan” travel campaign in the 1970s, followed by an “Exotic Japan” promotion in the 1980s. The campaigns were targeted at Japanese living in urban areas, whom, it was implied, had somehow lost a sense of Japan, rendering it a mysterious and compelling unknown. The essence of this Japan included closeness to nature, familiar architecture and a sense of community.
Tourists heeded the call and “discovered” Kurokawa. McMorran reports that onsen operators in Kurokawa were so unaccustomed to visitors that they were sometimes on their way out to run an errand or play softball and were taken aback when someone arrived seeking accommodations. The village quickly caught on to the potential for development offered by shifting cultural preferences and did its part to further emphasize its incarnation of the kind of Japan now so desirable. It planted thousands of trees and created rotenburo. The village further made sure that the buildings all maintained a Japanese facade, even if the inside was, for example, an Italian restaurant. They purposefully added irori open-hearth fires and displayed antique farm tools.
The crowning touch of genius for the mise-en-scene was an amplified sense of community achieved by the village. They accomplished this in the early 1990s under the slogan “Kurokawa Onsen, One Ryokan.” In fact, the village boasts 28 ryokan, but the scheme encouraged visitors to imagine the community as one spa, connected by a road. To enable this perception, the village had launched a bath pass system in 1986. Those who purchased the pass could go to three different ryokans’ baths, fostering a sense of connection between all the ryokan. The first year, 6,000 bath passes were sold, and five years later the number had increased to more than tenfold that number.
Guichard-Anguis and McMorran focus on different aspects of ryokan, but both assert the role of innovation in the creation of an experience that fulfills the desires of travelers. As visitors further diversify, perhaps new changes will be wrought, but hopefully heya-shoku will remain as one allure among many others.