Japanese Inns

The establishment of, first, the Yaami, then the Kyoto and the Miyako hotels over the first three decades of the Meiji period meant that foreign travellers could easily find high-quality, familiar styles of tourist accommodation in the city. Thus, in contrast to many rural destinations or smaller cities in the interior, “Japanese-style” hostelries were not recommended to, nor seemingly popular among, foreign visitors to Kyoto. The numerous editions of Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire, for example, only listed hotels in the case of Kyoto and, furthermore, was disparaging about inns in general — at which Oreste Vaccari took umbrage in the October 1939 edition of Japan Tourist Bureau's Tourist magazine. Most other English-language guidebooks, however, did give basic information about the names, prices, and location, at least, of selected “inns” (as they were usually categorised). A number of these are listed at the end of this section.

Typically, inns were cheaper than hotels, even with two meals included (as was standard); and, in the case of the Nakamura, it was cheaper to stay in a Japanese room than a European one (¥3, compared to ¥5–6, in 1914). The idea of an inn stay as a rare cultural or even luxurious experience for travellers, common in inbound tourism today, was not prevalent for much of this period — in fact, inns were often criticised for their smells, noise, poor heating, strange food, and lack of privacy. 

The "birth" of the ryokan

However, things begin to change in the 1930s: on the one hand, tourism bureaucrats argued, two decades of active state-led reform of facilities and services had brought Japanese-style hostelries up to international standards of comfort; on the other, the inn — now identified as “ryokan” even in English-language material — was increasingly seen as a repository of national-cultural essence, a key symbol of the survival of a unique Japanese tradition under the onslaught of a Western-led modernity. Especially after the invasion of Manchuria in 1932, when state agencies began to turn to international tourism as an effective instrument of cultural propaganda, the ryokan began to be featured in overseas promotional campaigns. 

Individual ryokan only rarely featured in promotions — more often “the ryokan” was written as a proper noun — but Kyoto’s Hiiragiya, for example, was occasionally invoked by name in material published by the Japan Tourist Bureau. 

Kyoto City Tourism Bureau followed national trends in attempting to reform ryokan in the city, publishing training manuals for owners and staff. These, typically, aimed to improve standards as a whole, but advice targeting the specific needs of foreign guests was often given its own section in publications. For example, the “Ryokan service manual” (Ryokan sābisu yomihon, 1938) noted that, although 11,539 foreigners stayed in Kyoto the previous year, only ten percent opted for a ryokan. To improve the situation, it recommended installing a smaller “family bath” (kazoku burō 家族風呂) that could be used for foreigners wanting privacy when bathing, providing English-language newspapers in the morning, and making sure maids always wore tabi socks, even in summer, among other things.