arturmarques.com iLog

“Reviving their secluded hot springs – The struggle of inn owners in Kurikoma Gotou” is a short documentary depicting the aftermath of the Iwate Miyagi Nairiku earthquake, from the perspective of inn owners, whose hot springs based businesses were severely affected.
The program starts with aerial pictures of the village of Kurikomayama, showing the effects of a mudslide that ran for 5 km and ended up killing people at the Komanoyu Hot Spring.

All the five inns know as “Kurikoma Gotou” suffered more or less serious structural damage, but the tragedy mainly hit the morale of the not so young owners, and this is where this TV program shines: it captures the people’s feelings and involves the viewer more than most fiction “dramas”, no matter their production budgets.

We first meet Osamu Miura, 55 years old, 4th generation owner, running the Yubama hot spring “Miura Ryokan Inn”, in the Hanayama District of Kurihara City. Back in 2008, his business had a 130 years history… Mr. Miura’s buildings were mostly spared to the earthquake’s devastation, but his “lantern inn” lost its source of water, so he must find a new hot spring, relocate, or quit. He finds a new hot spring by the river, 300 meters distant, but he is struggling, and the viewer sees it: without income, he starts working part time at a theme park; he then buys pipes and pipe insulators, but the water temperature still drops from 98C at the source, to half of that on delivery – ok for summer, not ok for winter.

Tsugio Sugawara, 67 years old, running the Shin-yu hot spring “Kurikoma-so Inn”, in the Kurikoma District of Kurihara City, is next and reinforces the suspicion that the “hot spring inn” business is not such a “business” – more a way of life. He does not have the 10 million yens required to fix his inn’s damages and is hesitant on taking debt.
Like Mr. Miura, he lost his hot spring and can’t find a replacement providing over 10 liters per minute, or above 35C.

The human side of this story leapfrogs when Mr. Miura, despite all his personal problems, admits being very worried with Akio Sugawara, of the “Kurikoma-so Inn”, based on the Komanoyu Hot Spring, where seven people were killed or unrecovered. Miura and Sugawara studied in the same high school (Miura was one grade higher) and were in the same mountaineering club, an activity where the participants’ lives can depend on each other and on a rope…
In 2009, Akio Sugawara visited “Yudate Ohkami”, built 20 years before, as the guardian god of the Komanoyu Hot Spring. He prayed there for a long time, in the freezing weather.

This gradual cadence that unveils from a faceless catastrophe to a specific set of victims, having in common not only being in the same “business”, but also sharing attitudes since young age, gives the documentary a touching realism.

After all the sorrow, the program shifts to “there will be sunshine after the rain” mode: five hot spring owners formed the “Kurikoma Gotou Restoration Group”, having Mr. Osamu Miura as their chairman. They made an appeal to the Mayor of Kurihara City (Isamu Sato) for financial support and, hoping for the best, they are positive and planning to reopen their inns, having received many support letters from all over Japan.

This is an emotional documentary that also calls the viewer’s attention to one interesting niche of the Japanese tourism industry.