Rekishi no Yado Kanaguya
歴史の宿 金具屋
Does Rekishi no Yado Kanaguya allow tattoos? In a private bath
A four-story wooden inn from the early Showa years, now a registered cultural property, with five private baths behind bolted doors, one of them a boat-shaped tub under a tiled Mount Fuji.
Kanaguya publishes no tattoo rule, in its FAQ or on its bathing-manners page. What it does publish is five private baths that cost nothing and need no booking: find one empty, lock it from the inside, and it is yours. The three large baths are shared and nothing is written about them, so use the private five.
Where it is
Tokyo STN
Nagano STN change to Nagano Electric Railway · 45 min
Hokuriku Shinkansen 97 min
Hotel locationYudanaka STN
JR East Pass Covers the Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo to Nagano. The Nagano Electric Railway on to Yudanaka is a private line and is paid separately. 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 rather than a tattoo policy (the inn’s bath list, which calls all five kashikiri baths free and unreserved)
Read on: kanaguya.com/?p=96
Best for: Five lockable baths in a registered wooden building, with no booking and no fee
Eight baths on four of the inn’s own sources: a rooftop open-air bath for each sex, two indoor baths that swap between men and women (the tiled Roman bath and the gourd-shaped Kamakura bath), and five kashikiri baths. Saigetsu-no-yu, with a Mount Fuji tile mural over a boat-shaped wooden tub, is the largest private one; Gankutsu-no-yu is cut into the rock of the hillside; the other three are small tubs on the second, third and fourth floors of the four-story wooden Saigetsuro. The inn allows photos inside the private baths but not in the shared ones. Staying guests only: no day bathing, and nothing inside the building is open to visitors. Free tours of the listed buildings at 17:30 and of the sources in the morning. The room key also opens Shibu’s nine soto-yu, 15:00 to 22:00 on arrival day and 6:00 to 10:00 on departure.
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