Kawanishi, five minutes on foot from JR Kotohira station Hotel ★★★☆☆

Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku

ことひら温泉 琴参閣

Does Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku allow tattoos? In a private bath

Private bath only

Fifteen kinds of bath across three halls, and above them a set of rooms with a private tub on the balcony that the hotel is careful to say is not spring water.

The largest bath building in Konpira Onsen has no published tattoo rule, and the answer here is a room rather than a policy. Sansuikan and Hiten-kan both hold rooms with a private open-air tub on the balcony, from a 41 sqm twin up to an 80 sqm suite, and each of those room pages carries the same warning: the tub in the room is not spring water. It is ordinary heated water in a private tub, which settles the tattoo question but not the onsen one, so anyone who came for the mineral water is looking at the shared baths.

Show this at the front desk

※お部屋のお風呂は温泉ではございません。

The operator’s own wording, to show at the desk if you need to.

Where it is

Okayama STN Tadotsu STN change to JR Dosan line · 13 min JR Shiokaze limited express 49 min Matsuyama STN Hotel location
Kotohira STN
Dogo is 25 minutes on the tram from Matsuyama station. Takamatsu, Kotohira and the Iya valley are quicker from Okayama, over the Seto Ohashi bridge: 53 minutes on the Marine Liner to Takamatsu, 1 h 16 to Kotohira, and the Nanpu limited express to Oboke for the Iya bus. Matsuyama itself is 2 h 45 from Okayama on the Shiokaze.. Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · open in Google Maps

JR All Shikoku Rail Pass Three to seven days, from 12,000 yen, on every JR Shikoku train, with non-reserved seats on the limited expresses. It starts at Kojima, the first stop on the Shikoku side of the line from Okayama, so Okayama to Kojima is a short separate fare. It covers the Shiokaze or Nanpu to Tadotsu or Kotohira and the Dosan line. Sold on Klook.

What happens when you arrive

Skip the shared baths and reserve the private one the way this page describes. Once the door is closed, the bath is yours.

How we know

Confirmed from official site — bath structure, not a tattoo policy. Every open-air room listing at kotosankaku.jp/rooms repeats the not-spring-water line. Forty-five pages of the site were read and none of them mentions tattoos.

Read on: kotosankaku.jp/rooms/

Best for: A large-hotel room with its own balcony tub, if plain hot water in private is the trade you want

Room baths are not onsen water, stated by the hotel on each listing; set heated_water. Open-air rooms: Premium Suite open-air triple, 80 sqm, one room, Sansuikan 10F; Luxury open-air twin, 41 sqm, three rooms, Sansuikan 9F; open-air Japanese rooms on Sansuikan 4F, six rooms, and 3F, seven rooms; an open-air Japanese room in Hiten-kan, three rooms; and a Hiten-kan twin with a garden bath that connects to the neighboring open-air room. The shared bathing is the selling point of the house and it is the part we cannot speak for.

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Booking through this button costs you nothing extra and sends a small commission our way — it’s what keeps this guide free for our tattoo community, and every policy on it checked. Thank you.

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