Gora Kansuiro

A Mitsubishi family's Taishō-era villa where Emperor Shōwa slept, with two private springs, a 5,000-tsubo garden and nine of 14 rooms with their own spring-water bath — but it is genuinely old, and the cheaper rooms show it

Gora Kansuiro began as the holiday villa of Iwasaki Koya, a son of Mitsubishi's founder Iwasaki Yatarō, who bought land in Gora from 1915. Suzuki Niroku, then running Motoyu Kansuiro in Tonosawa (a different inn), bought it after the war and opened it in 1949; in 1952 Suzuki struck Gora's first onsen well on the grounds. Emperor Shōwa and the Empress stayed in the Kinkatei annex in 1955, and Clint Eastwood and the Rawhide cast in 1962. Mori Trust, owner of the Laforet Club resorts, bought the inn in 2017. Its 14 rooms sit in two old wooden wings and a cluster of annexes around the garden, and nine have their own bath fed by the inn's two wells. Japanese guests rate it 4.47 across 427 reviews on one major site (service 4.60, meals 4.53), though many 2026 reviews came through a plan offering ¥10,000 off for posting one; a travel-review site has 3.32 across 22. Bloggers in 2022 and 2023 and most 2025–2026 reviewers praise the attentive staff, careful kaiseki, the garden and the silky free-flowing water. The complaints are about age: in January 2025 a family in a bath-less ground-floor room reported draughts, an air conditioner that cut out and a sewage smell masked by air freshener, and others mention a worn washbasin, small cramped shared baths, steps everywhere, a rushed dinner for one in January 2026, paid amenities and ¥450 bottled water. Guests now are mostly from overseas. Rates run about ¥31,000–56,000 per person with two meals, and the imperial annex about ¥356,000–389,000 a night.