Dogo Onsen Dogokan

Kisho Kurokawa's postmodern take on an Edo inn town, on the hill above Dogo: some of Shikoku's best-rated kaiseki and service, nine rooms with their own open-air onsen bath — but the shared baths are recirculated and the building shows its age

Dogokan is the big inn on the rise above Dogo's tram terminus that the architect Kisho Kurokawa designed around the idea Kurokawa called 'symbiosis' of old and new. Completed in 1989, it pairs a concrete postmodern exterior with an interior modelled on an Edo-period storehouse residence and old townscape: a lobby waterfall and stream, a 300-year-old pine in the garden, and a nail-free reconstruction of a tea room in the taste of the tea master Furuta Oribe. It has 90 rooms, 81 of them Japanese-style, and is run by a company in the Setonaikai Kisen ferry group; the top floor was rebuilt as Japanese-modern rooms in March 2023. Japanese guests rate it 4.7 across 2,736 reviews on one major site (dinner and service both 4.8), 4.66 across 2,091 on another and 4.59 across 181 on a third. The praise is remarkably consistent: seasonal Ehime kaiseki that always ends with sea-bream rice, served on striking ceramics; attentive room attendants; a free lounge pouring three kinds of mikan juice; and small touches such as staff wiping your car's windscreen before you leave. Only the nine seventh-floor rooms have their own open-air bath of Dogo spring water. The large baths use Dogo's piped spring but are recirculated and chlorinated, the men's and women's sides never swap, and they are reached by stairs (there is a stair lift). Complaints from late 2025 to 2026: an ageing building, thin futons, cramped entrances and toilets in some standard rooms, a lukewarm cold plunge and weak sauna, a dead insect left on one futon, and a May 2026 dinner served by a trainee under supervision that one couple said ruined the evening. Standard rooms with two meals run about ¥60,500–92,400 for two.