Best ryokan in Kotohira: 4 inns compared on onsen, food and price

Kotohira Hananoyu Koubaitei has the most rooms with an onsen bath of their own, fed by the Chikōin spring. Its twelve Hana Club rooms are themed on the Man'yōshū poetry anthology, and those with an onsen open-air bath also come with lounge access and one free 45-minute private-bath session: a March 2022 blogger paid ¥83,600 for two with two meals and found the bath 'quite roomy for a room bath', and an April 2026 family called it big enough to share, though a September 2026 guest found the fittings old and the stone bath's steps steep. The four corner suites, renovated in March 2024, add a view over town from the bath, and the Kunshikō suites, renovated in March 2023, include one universal room with fewer steps. Kotohira Kadan's Sansuikaku rooms of 57–76㎡ have an onsen-fed open-air bath — an August 2026 guest praised Room E's new finish and view — plus free use of the forest private bath Mori-no-yu; the catch at its 56㎡ Fujimidai open-air-bath room is a walled-in tub with no view and, for one July 2026 guest, stained tatami.

Konpira Onsen Yumoto Yachiyo has two non-smoking designer rooms, Kemari and Ogatama, with a semi-open-air bath the inn describes as free-flowing — the only free-flowing baths we found in Kotohira — at over ¥30,000 per person on one booking site; a December 2025 guest found the bath relaxing but noticed wiring marks on the walls, and an October 2026 guest found the fridge iced up and the futon thin. Its designer private bath, Fukufune, costs ¥2,200 for 40 minutes. Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku renovated its Sansui-kan rooms with private open-air baths in March 2023, with views towards Konpira-san, from about ¥69,000–71,000 for two with two meals on one booking site — but the inn states those baths are not onsen water, and it has no private baths to book.

Kotohira Kadan is the pick for kaiseki: dinner is its highest-rated category on two major sites, where the inn rates 4.6 across more than 1,000 reviews and 4.2 across 1,645. The menu is built on Kagawa's Olive beef and Olive pork, Sanuki Cochin chicken, Seto Inland Sea fish and Sanuki udon — recent menus included wild sea bream and tuna sashimi, winter Spanish mackerel grilled in Konpira miso and green-tea udon — served in the Keyaki dining room, a two-seat semi-private room, or in your room for villa and Fujimidai open-air-bath guests. Breakfast is a big Japanese set with a clam-and-ginger hotpot and fresh dashimaki egg, or a light breakfast with a voucher for a local udon shop. Several 2026 reviewers called dinner superb; critics in 2025–2026 found sashimi dry, rice kept warm too long, most dishes laid out at once, or the meal simply average. Book dinner: there are few restaurants nearby after dark.

Kotohira Hananoyu Koubaitei's Maruchū dining room, built with 300-year-old beams, is run by a head chef named a 'Contemporary Master Craftsman' in 2020 and awarded the Medal with Yellow Ribbon in 2021; the signatures are beef and seafood you grill on hot stones and a house-made tofu hotpot, and its breakfast buffet of about 60 dishes, with smoothies from all four Shikoku prefectures, is its most-praised meal. But 2026 dinner reviews are split — small portions for some, and one guest went to a convenience store afterwards — and since April 2026 dinner runs in two sittings set by your plan. Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku serves kaiseki in partitioned or private rooms, or a buffet with free-flowing drinks on many plans, and dinner scores 4.5 on one major site; its breakfast buffet of about 50 dishes is praised, but the hall gets crowded, and a February 2026 guest's 'private' room was only partitioned, with a drunken party next door. Konpira Onsen Yumoto Yachiyo's kaiseki of sashimi, local beef with Konpira garlic miso, kamameshi and Sanuki udon struck every blogger as filling, and its Japanese breakfast is its best-rated element, though 2025–2026 reviewers mention noisy table-clearing and udon served too firm.

Kotohira Kadan began in 1627 as an inn on the approach to Kotohira-gū and took its current name in 1905, when it reopened as a garden of detached villas; Mori Ōgai stayed three days in 1908 and wrote it into a story, and Yosano Akiko, Kitahara Hakushū and Ibuse Masuji followed. Today it's a 40-room inn of the Hotel New Awaji group spread across three sukiya villas and three newer buildings on a slope. The villas are the rooms to aim for: Enjukaku (105㎡), where Ōgai stayed, with a crow transom painting by Nagai Ichika; Chōseiden (152㎡, for guests aged 13 and up), moved here in 1951, with a hinoki bath over a small courtyard; and Sentei, the oldest, whose shadowy, wabi feel 'divides opinion', a 2026 guest wrote. Villa guests get dinner in the room, an 11:00 check-out and a free private-bath session.

Konpira Onsen Yumoto Yachiyo traces itself to 1725, when it opened as Shiragaya; the inn says its spring was struck in 1976 and that until 1998 'Konpira Onsen' meant Yachiyo alone. Today it's a 39-room, mostly tatami inn in a Showa-era block — old-fashioned charm rather than polish, with a building that is old and dim. Kotohira Hananoyu Koubaitei, a 69-room onsen hotel, is newer in feel, but its dining room is built with 300-year-old beams and its Hana Club rooms take their themes from the Man'yōshū. Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku is the big one: 223 rooms, an escalator in the atrium lobby, very long corridors lined with vases, screens and platters, a 400-tatami banquet hall, karaoke, an izakaya and a game corner.

Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku is the easiest base for the shrine climb: five minutes on foot from JR Kotohira Station and from the start of the approach, with a free station pick-up by reservation (12:00–19:00) and 200 free parking spaces you can use before check-in and after check-out while you climb. Reviewers mention walking sticks on loan, and bookings on the official site add loan walking shoes, a ¥500-per-person in-house credit on two-meal plans and free stays for co-sleeping children; a September 2026 guest bathed a one-year-old in a room's open-air bath. The catch is size: expect tour groups and some noise, breakfast queues and, in the cheapest Sansui-kan rooms, a musty smell. Kotohira Hananoyu Koubaitei, also five minutes from the station, welcomes children with a summer pool and festival-style events — from 1 October 2026 children aged 0–5 pay a ¥2,200 facility fee — but it takes tour groups too, its 70-space car park is a walk from the entrance, and there's no covered drop-off.

Konpira Onsen Yumoto Yachiyo is closest to the shrine steps, a minute or two away on the main street; 2026 reviewers say the inn kept luggage and cars while they climbed Konpira-san, and one was told the car could stay until noon after check-out. There's no inn car, though: station pick-up is by the town's Mobi shared taxi, and the free car parks are in three lots a short way off. Kotohira Kadan's garden path joins the shrine's main stairway partway up, so you can start the climb early from the inn, and children get kids' kaiseki and baby equipment; but the hillside site has lots of stairs and a layout several 2026 guests called a maze, drivers found the car park across the road below the entrance confusing, and wheelchair users should ask for the one barrier-free twin.

Konpira Onsen Yumoto Yachiyo, the only value-tier inn of the four, is the cheapest: room-only stays ran about ¥7,000–19,000 per person on one booking site in 2026, two-meal plans about ¥14,000–28,000, and a couple paid ¥26,400 for two with two meals in May 2024. The verdict on recent stays rests mainly on booking-site reviews, and they are weak: 2.8 across 74 reviews on one major site (cleanliness 2.4, bath 2.7) and 3.17 across 766 on another. The location, the price, the breakfast and kind front-desk staff win praise; the complaints in 2025–2026 are consistent — rubbish, hair and bird droppings in the baths, a musty smell, broken taps and lights, thin walls, and a rooftop bath guests say can be seen from neighbouring buildings.

Kotohira Hananoyu Koubaitei ran from about ¥15,000 to over ¥30,000 per person with two meals in 2026 and rates 4.6 across 1,101 reviews on one major site and 4.58 across 1,772 on another, with free sake and ice lollies after the bath. Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku costs about ¥30,000–54,000 for two with two meals in Sansui-kan and ¥60,000–110,000 in Hiten-kan, and rates 4.5 across 5,451 reviews on one major site (dinner and service 4.5, rooms 4.3) — but a May 2026 guest felt the fifth-floor special floor wasn't worth the price. Kotohira Kadan runs roughly ¥20,000–30,000 per person with two meals, with a 15% service charge included and a ¥150 bath tax, for the most historic stay of the four.

Kotohira Hananoyu Koubaitei is built around bathing: 15 baths in three areas, with its own Yumoto Konpira Onsen Hananoyu, a sodium chloride spring, in the main baths and the Chikōin spring in the open-air, private and in-room baths. A notice photographed by a May 2026 blogger gives its own well as 25.5°C, pH 7.4 and 111 litres a minute, and lists heating, recirculation and chlorine. The basement baths have hinoki tubs, a bubble tub and a sauna, the women's side floats roses in the evening and orchids in the morning, and the garden bathhouse adds standing and waterfall tubs and a foot bath; reviewers love the variety, but there are no views, and a June 2026 family met insects at the garden bath. Kotohira Kadan uses the Chikōin spring — weakly radioactive, weakly alkaline and heated — and doesn't say whether its baths are free-flowing or recirculated; its large bath looks across the Sanuki plain to Mount Iino, with an open-air bath by a lit bamboo grove and a sauna, and guests find the water ordinary but well-tempered.

Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku's Chikōin water is listed by one booking site as diluted, heated and recirculated with filtration; its Sansui-kan baths, billed as among Shikoku's largest, have several tubs, a garden open-air bath and a sauna, and Hiten-kan guests also get a tenth-floor open-air bath with views. Bloggers found the main baths roomy and relaxing even with ten people in, but 2026 critics found them dark and the floor slippery. Konpira Onsen Yumoto Yachiyo's own spring is also listed as diluted, heated and recirculated, and a 2023 blogger read chlorine disinfection on the posted analysis. Its rooftop open-air bath, rebuilt in 2022 with a lie-down tub and a round tub and given two barrel saunas in 2026, alternates by time: men 15:00–18:30 and 6:00–10:00, women only 19:00–23:00, with bathing wear provided for women.

For history, a villa where Mori Ōgai stayed and the best-rated kaiseki, Kotohira Kadan — accepting a hillside maze of stairs and uneven service. For an onsen bath in your room, the widest choice of shared baths and a family-friendly house, Kotohira Hananoyu Koubaitei, if recirculated water, tour groups and upkeep slips won't bother you. For the easiest shrine climb, big baths and a big breakfast buffet, Kotohira Onsen Kotosankaku — checking which wing your plan names, since the tenth-floor bath and Ichiriki-chaya are for Hiten-kan guests only. And on a budget, steps from the shrine stairs, Konpira Onsen Yumoto Yachiyo, as a cheap, convenient base rather than a polished onsen stay. Whichever you pick, check the exact room: in Kotohira, an onsen bath of your own comes only with certain rooms, Kotosankaku's in-room open-air baths aren't onsen water, and at Kotosankaku and Yachiyo the cheapest, oldest rooms draw the most complaints.