Matsudaya Hotel
松田屋ホテル
Does Matsudaya Hotel allow tattoos? In a private bath
The tub in the family bath was set in 1860, it is free, and nobody books it: you use it if it is empty.
Matsudaya publishes no tattoo rule, so do not read the large bath as open. Two things here are private anyway. Several rooms, among them Gansetsu and Koto, have their own open-air bath running Yuda water free-flowing. And the family bath, Ishin-no-yu, is free to guests, is not booked, and is used by whoever finds it empty, which is a low-friction way to bathe alone.
Show this at the front desk
家族風呂は予約制ではないので空いていたらご自由にご利用になりこの歴史的文化財に実際に触れてみてください。
The operator’s own wording, to show at the desk if you need to.
Where it is
Hiroshima STN
Sanyo Shinkansen 31 min
Okayama STN
Hotel locationYuda-Onsen STN
JR Hiroshima-Yamaguchi Area Pass Five days for 15,000 yen on JR West trains between Mihara and Hakata, reserved Sanyo Shinkansen seats included. It covers the Shinkansen from Hiroshima to Shin-Yamaguchi and the Yamaguchi line on to Yuda-Onsen. 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 (the hotel’s own FAQ for the family bath, its room pages for the open-air bath rooms) — bath structure, not a tattoo policy. 45 pages of the site carry no tattoo statement.
Read on: matsudayahotel.co.jp/faq/
Best for: A free family bath whose tub was built in 1860 and has never stopped being used.
Founded 1675. The family bath Ishin-no-yu has a tub set in 1860 at the end of the Tokugawa period; the hotel says Takasugi Shinsaku, Kido Takayoshi, Ito Hirobumi, Saigo Takamori, Okubo Toshimichi and Sakamoto Ryoma all used it while plotting here, and it is free to guests with no booking. Room types run to Japanese rooms of 6 to 8 tatami in the old wing and Japanese, Japanese-Western and special rooms in the new wing, with open-air bath rooms among them; Gansetsu, renovated and named after Yamagata Aritomo, has a free-flowing Yuda open-air bath, and Koto is a 54-square-metre Japanese-modern twin with an open-air bath. A Meiji Restoration exhibition room sits inside the hotel.
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