Japan counts almost 28,000 hot-spring sources. A tenth of them are in one city, some of them are not hot, and most of the water is pumped. What the national hot-spring table shows, and how to use it to choose a bath.
27,899 spring sources · 2,839 resort areas · March 2025The report
One city holds a tenth of Japan’s hot springs.
Beppu, on the east coast of Kyushu, is a city of eight hot-spring districts, from the seafront to the steaming hillsides of Kannawa and Myōban. The city counts 2,831 hot-spring sources, about one in ten of Japan’s total, and they discharge more than 100,000 litres of water a minute. Beppu City, March 2025.
Japan’s Environment Ministry counted 27,899 hot-spring sources at the end of March 2025. Around them are 2,839 resort areas with somewhere to stay, 13,425 inns and hotels using hot-spring water, and 7,721 public baths. Those lodgings recorded 125.4 million overnight stays in the year to March 2025, up from 120.7 million the year before. Environment Ministry, FY2024 table.
Beppu’s prefecture, Oita, leads the country with 5,094 sources, 18.3% of the national total, and the highest discharge at 293,610 litres a minute. Kagoshima follows with 2,735 sources and Hokkaido with 2,249. All three sit on volcanic ground.
A hot spring does not have to be hot
Under the Hot Springs Act of 1948, water, steam or gas from underground counts as a hot spring if it comes out at 25°C or warmer, or if it contains enough of any one of a list of substances, such as lithium, sulfur or radon. Environment Ministry definition.
That second route matters: 4,074 sources, 15% of the total, come out of the ground below 25°C and qualify on minerals alone; baths heat the water before anyone gets in. Hiroshima has the most of them, 334. At the other end, 12,695 sources (46%) are 42°C or hotter, and 1,036 are steam or gas.
Most of the water is pumped
Of the 2,477,713 litres a minute reported nationwide, 73% is pumped from wells and 27% flows out on its own. Of the sources in use, three in four rely on pumps. Another 11,031 sources, about 40% of the total, are not used at all.
Pumping is what puts hot springs in places with no volcano. Tokyo has 168 sources, and almost all of its 30,966 litres a minute is pumped. Natural flow is concentrated where the ground is hottest: Oita, Kagoshima and Iwate lead that measure.
Interactive atlas
Follow the water.
Switch between the sources underground, the places built around them, and the amount of water they discharge. Select a prefecture to compare its figures.
Used and unused sources combined. A source is not an individual bath or a resort.
Oita · 5,094 sources
Compare all 47 prefectures
| Prefecture | Spring sources | Resort areas | Water output · L/min | Lodging facilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hokkaido | 2,249 | 226 | 189,888 | 740 |
| Aomori | 1,089 | 120 | 139,808 | 216 |
| Iwate | 393 | 81 | 111,915 | 227 |
| Miyagi | 740 | 39 | 28,178 | 252 |
| Akita | 616 | 104 | 79,766 | 203 |
| Yamagata | 412 | 67 | 44,887 | 252 |
| Fukushima | 799 | 122 | 76,291 | 474 |
| Ibaraki | 157 | 39 | 22,704 | 74 |
| Tochigi | 633 | 66 | 61,243 | 414 |
| Gunma | 459 | 98 | 53,904 | 631 |
| Saitama | 117 | 31 | 15,530 | 53 |
| Chiba | 144 | 95 | 10,606 | 188 |
| Tokyo | 168 | 22 | 30,966 | 41 |
| Kanagawa | 602 | 36 | 33,306 | 586 |
| Niigata | 536 | 135 | 64,634 | 490 |
| Toyama | 169 | 61 | 29,181 | 115 |
| Ishikawa | 330 | 48 | 30,972 | 191 |
| Fukui | 158 | 38 | 7,347 | 125 |
| Yamanashi | 304 | 29 | 35,946 | 208 |
| Nagano | 955 | 193 | 106,110 | 998 |
| Gifu | 506 | 55 | 68,270 | 331 |
| Shizuoka | 2,185 | 118 | 109,955 | 2,397 |
| Aichi | 133 | 35 | 15,539 | 90 |
| Mie | 214 | 74 | 47,520 | 363 |
| Shiga | 86 | 27 | 11,126 | 56 |
| Kyoto | 146 | 37 | 16,713 | 182 |
| Osaka | 173 | 17 | 35,121 | 42 |
| Hyogo | 443 | 78 | 46,371 | 322 |
| Nara | 77 | 34 | 6,864 | 73 |
| Wakayama | 506 | 50 | 58,206 | 364 |
| Tottori | 363 | 15 | 17,664 | 100 |
| Shimane | 267 | 41 | 33,320 | 106 |
| Okayama | 221 | 32 | 21,830 | 81 |
| Hiroshima | 374 | 56 | 33,282 | 75 |
| Yamaguchi | 404 | 40 | 21,739 | 131 |
| Tokushima | 82 | 25 | 7,313 | 29 |
| Kagawa | 200 | 28 | 9,962 | 55 |
| Ehime | 192 | 37 | 18,019 | 97 |
| Kochi | 96 | 37 | 2,595 | 73 |
| Fukuoka | 422 | 46 | 53,956 | 97 |
| Saga | 187 | 21 | 21,529 | 86 |
| Nagasaki | 203 | 37 | 26,481 | 94 |
| Kumamoto | 1,339 | 55 | 129,598 | 392 |
| Oita | 5,094 | 63 | 293,610 | 914 |
| Miyazaki | 199 | 29 | 25,387 | 67 |
| Kagoshima | 2,735 | 87 | 167,150 | 311 |
| Okinawa | 22 | 15 | 5,411 | 19 |
No matching prefecture.
FY2024 · March 2025 snapshot
Reading the data
Where people actually stay.
Switch the map from sources to resort areas and the order changes. Hokkaido has 226 resort areas, Nagano 193 and Niigata 135. Oita, the leader in sources, has 63. Its thousands of sources feed a smaller number of resort areas, led by Beppu.
Lodgings tell another story. Shizuoka, home to Atami and the Izu Peninsula resorts, has 2,397 inns and hotels using hot-spring water, more than twice as many as any other prefecture, and 10.6 million overnight stays a year. Hokkaido has the most stays, 13.6 million, followed by Shizuoka, Nagano, Gunma and Oita. Nagano has the most public baths, 718.
The totals are shifting slightly. Between FY2023 and FY2024 the number of resort areas fell from 2,857 to 2,839, while lodgings rose from 13,179 to 13,425. The table does not say which places opened, closed or changed how they report.
A source, a resort, a bath
The ministry counts three different things. A source is a well or spring, used or not. A resort area is a place with accommodation that uses hot-spring water. Lodgings and public baths are counted separately. None of these figures tells you how many baths a visitor can use, or what the water is like when it reaches the tub.
For your journey
Use the map to choose a direction.
If you are deciding where a hot-spring detour fits, start with the resort-area layer, then use sources and water output to see why a region stands out. For water that reaches the surface on its own, Oita, Kagoshima and Iwate lead the natural-flow figures.
Then narrow it to a town and an actual bath. Check the operator’s current hours, admission and bathing rules before you go.
Read the notice by the door
Every hot-spring bath open to the public in Japan must post the water’s analysis and bathing cautions. Since May 2005 it must also say whether the water is diluted, heated, recirculated or filtered, and whether anything is added to it, such as bath salts or disinfectant, and why. Environment Ministry, 2005.
With one source in seven below 25°C, plenty of baths have to heat their water. If you want water straight from the source, the notice is where to check. Look for the words 源泉かけ流し (gensen kakenagashi): water that flows through the tub once and is not reused.
The sourcebook
Sources &
calculations.
Checked September 24, 2026.
Download the data- Source: Environment Ministry, FY2024 Hot Spring Utilization Status, as of the end of March 2025. All 47 prefecture rows were transcribed from the official one-page table and re-checked against it on September 24, 2026; every row matches.
- Totals are checked against the ministry’s national row: 27,899 sources, 2,839 resort areas, 2,477,713 L/min, 13,425 lodging facilities and 125,414,300 overnight stays.
- Temperature bands, natural and pumped discharge, and overnight stays come from the same table and are included in the downloadable data.
- The map uses absolute prefecture totals. Color bins are fixed within each measure and change when you choose a different measure. Okinawa is repositioned in an inset.
- This snapshot does not show individual spring locations, chemical composition, temperature at the point of bathing, or current visitor access.
Primary data; one-page prefecture table, March 2025 snapshot.
The 25°C threshold and the list of qualifying substances.
The posting requirements for dilution, heating, recirculation and additives.
2,831 sources and 101,856 L/min as of March 31, 2025.
Publication index and historical survey tables.
Map outlines use the Almanac’s prefecture geometry package.
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