Hoshinoya Karuizawa

A mountain stream comes down through the larch woods west of Karuizawa, and along its course a set of low villas steps beside terraced pools. Hoshinoya Karuizawa opened there in 2005, the first hotel of the Hoshinoya brand, on the site of the hot-spring inn where the Hoshino family began receiving guests nine decades earlier.

History

The Hoshino family's business in the valley dates from 1904, when it began working the forests of Naka-Karuizawa for timber. In 1914 the family opened Hoshino Onsen, a hot-spring inn. Karuizawa had by then become a summer retreat for foreign missionaries and Tokyo's elite, a reputation that went back to the 1880s, when the Canadian missionary Alexander Croft Shaw built a summer house in the town and others followed. Writers and thinkers came to the inn. The Christian thinker Kanzo Uchimura and the poet Hakushu Kitahara were among those drawn to the area, and in 1921 a summer school on art and free education was held in the building that became Karuizawa Kogen Church.

The family also built a small hydroelectric plant on the stream early in the last century, and the resort still generates a large share of its own energy from water and geothermal heat. In 1991 Yoshiharu Hoshino, of the fourth generation, took over the company and turned it into Hoshino Resorts, an operator of ryokan and resorts across Japan. The old inn was rebuilt as Hoshinoya Karuizawa, a luxury resort in Karuizawa's forest that set the pattern for every Hoshinoya since.

Architecture and design

The architect Rie Azuma designed the buildings, and the landscape architect Hiroki Hasegawa shaped the grounds. The villas follow the slope in small clusters, many of them grouped around a series of stepped pools fed by the stream, so the sound of falling water runs through the site. The forms are simple, in dark timber, plaster and stone, and the roofs are kept low beneath the trees. In winter the pools and paths are often under snow, and the woods are bare enough to show the shape of the valley.

Rooms and suites

There are 77 rooms in three main types named for their setting. Mizunami rooms face the water terraces, Yamaroji rooms sit on the hillside paths and Niwaroji rooms open onto the garden lanes. Interiors are in wood with large windows onto the forest, and each room has a deep bath. There are no televisions, a choice that keeps attention on the woods outside.

Dining

The main restaurant, Kasuke, serves multi-course Japanese dinners built around the produce of Nagano, the mountain prefecture. Beyond the hotel, the cafés and shops of Harunire Terrace, built by the company under the elm trees along the Yukawa river, can be reached on foot.

Wellness

Hot-spring bathing is where the family business began, and it shapes the hotel. Guests have use of a meditation bath, a pair of dark and light pools where quiet and warm water do the work. Tombo-no-yu, the public hot-spring bathhouse the company opened in the same area in 2002, has indoor and outdoor baths. A spa offers treatments among the trees.

Weddings and events

Weddings are part of the life of the Hoshino area. Karuizawa Kogen Church, whose history goes back to the 1921 summer school, and the Stone Church, built in 1988 to a design by the American architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg as a memorial to Kanzo Uchimura, are both run by the company and host ceremonies for couples.

Location

The hotel is in Naka-Karuizawa, a few kilometres west of the town centre. Karuizawa Station, on the Hokuriku Shinkansen, is about an hour from Tokyo Station by the fastest trains, and Naka-Karuizawa Station on the local Shinano Railway is closer. The Wild Bird Forest, a protected woodland beside the resort, is the base for nature walks led by Picchio, the guiding team the company founded in 1992. Tokyo's airports are around two and a half hours or more away by rail and road.