Amanemu

Above the inlets of Ago Bay, where pearl rafts float on water dotted with wooded islands, the low dark roofs of Amanemu sit among the trees of a hillside on the Shima peninsula. The resort opened in March 2016 as Aman's second house in Japan, two years after Aman Tokyo, and it is built around a natural hot spring.

History

Shima lies at the eastern end of the Kii peninsula in Mie Prefecture, within Ise-Shima National Park, created in 1946. The coast is known for pearls. In 1893 Kokichi Mikimoto produced his first cultured pearls in these waters near Toba, and Ago Bay became one of the centres of pearl farming in Japan. It is also home to the ama, women who dive for abalone, shellfish and seaweed. Inland stands the Ise Grand Shrine, the most sacred Shinto shrine in the country, whose main sanctuaries are rebuilt every twenty years.

Aman built the resort on a hillside beside Nemu Resort, a long-established leisure complex with a golf course, and named it by joining its own name to nemu, the Japanese name for the silk tree, whose leaves fold at night. Two months after Amanemu opened, the leaders of the G7 met for their May 2016 summit at the Shima Kanko Hotel on nearby Kashikojima, which drew attention to the bay from around the world.

Architecture and design

Kerry Hill, the Australian architect behind several Aman resorts and Aman Tokyo, designed Amanemu. He drew on the minka, the traditional Japanese farmhouse, with dark timber, deep eaves and broad roofs, and kept the buildings low among the trees so that the bay and its islands carry the view. The interiors are pale and quiet, in timber, stone and paper, and each suite has an engawa, the wooden veranda of a Japanese house, between the rooms and the garden.

Rooms and suites

There are 24 suites and four two-bedroom villas, 28 residences in all, a small number for a luxury resort on the Shima peninsula. Each suite has its own onsen bath filled with the spring water, set beside sliding windows onto the trees or the bay. The villas are larger and set apart, with their own onsen and space for families or small groups.

Dining

The restaurant draws on the produce of the coast and of Mie, which supplies Ise lobster, abalone gathered by the ama, oysters from the bays and Matsusaka beef from inland. Meals are served in a dining room overlooking the water, and Japanese and Western menus are offered side by side.

Wellness

The Aman Spa is built around the hot spring, with two onsen pavilions for private bathing, treatment rooms, a long swimming pool and a fitness area. The spring water flows from deep beneath the peninsula, and bathing in it is the centre of a stay. In the evening the pavilions are lit softly and open towards the trees, and in winter steam rises from the baths into the cold air.

Location

Ugata and Kashikojima, at the end of the Kintetsu line from Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya, are the nearest railway stations, and the trains pass through Ise and Toba on the way. The drive to the Ise Grand Shrine takes around forty minutes to an hour. Chubu Centrair International Airport, near Nagoya, is about two hours by road, and the Osaka airports are further.