Tawaraya Ryokan

Fuyacho street, a narrow lane of shops and townhouses in the Nakagyo ward of Kyoto, gives no hint that one of its wooden gateways leads to the most respected inn in Japan. Tawaraya Ryokan has stood here since about 1704, when a kimono merchant from Okayama named Okazaki opened a lodging for travellers, and it has been owned and run by his descendants ever since. The eleventh generation, Toshi Okazaki Satow, has had charge of it since the 1960s.

History

The inn survived the fires that destroyed much of central Kyoto in the Edo period and the hard years after the Second World War, when Western visitors began to discover it. Kyoto escaped the bombing of 1945, which is why an inn of this age still stands in the middle of the city, on a street that has kept its scale. Alfred Hitchcock stayed here, as did Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Leonard Bernstein and a long list of writers, designers and heads of state who found a Japanese inn preferable to a Western hotel. The family has never advertised, never expanded beyond the original block and has no website; the inn is booked by telephone, fax or through a travel agent.

Architecture and design

The buildings are low timber structures around interior gardens, rebuilt and extended in stages over three centuries, so that corridors turn corners and change level. Every room is a tatami room with shoji screens, a tokonoma alcove holding a scroll and a single flower arrangement, and a view on to its own garden of moss, stone and maple. Toshi Okazaki Satow has furnished the inn with antiques and with modern pieces by Japanese craftsmen, and the small library beside the entrance is one of the few shared rooms. Nothing is signposted and there is no reception desk: guests are met at the gate, their shoes are taken, and they are led to their room.

Rooms and suites

There are about 18 rooms. Each has a cedar or hinoki bath, some of them opening to the garden, and a sitting area that becomes a bedroom when the maids lay out the futons after dinner. The staff assigned to a room look after its guests for the whole stay, serving meals, running the bath and laying out yukata.

Dining

Tawaraya has no public restaurant. Dinner is a kaiseki meal of many small courses, served in the room at a set hour and changing with the season and the market. Breakfast is also served in the room, Japanese by default, with a Western breakfast available on request. The meal hours are fixed when a guest arrives, and the whole house eats in its own rooms at roughly the same time.

Weddings and events

The inn does not host weddings, banquets or meetings. It is a private house for its guests, and that is the whole point.

Location

Fuyacho street runs north from Oike-dori, a few minutes on foot from Kyoto City Hall and from Karasuma-Oike station on the subway. Hiiragiya, the other great ryokan of the city, stands across the lane. Nishiki market and the Kamo river are within ten minutes on foot, the Kyoto International Manga Museum and Nijo castle lie to the north-west, and Kyoto Station is about 15 minutes by taxi. Kansai International Airport is around 90 minutes by car. Of all the luxury hotels in Kyoto, Tawaraya is the one that is least a hotel and most a house.