About this catalogue
This site lists 161 places to stay in Japan. It is not a selection of favourites — every one of them holds a distinction awarded by somebody who is not us.
Who decides what is on the list
Not this site. The catalogue is drawn from the published rosters below, and it is not all of them: what is here has been checked against those rosters, what is missing is missing, and the count above is the honest one.
- MICHELIN Key — 128 in Japan as of 10 September 2026. 126 of them are here.
- Relais & Châteaux — 15 in Japan as of 9 September 2026. 10 of them are here.
- The Ryokan Collection — 46 in Japan as of 10 September 2026. 46 of them are here.
Nothing can be added by asking, and nothing is removed for declining to work with us. If a property gains or loses its award, this list follows.
Where the numbers come from
Room counts, bath arrangements, dining style and rates are read from each property’s own site wherever it publishes them, and from its official booking pages otherwise. English names are read off the property’s own site — of 44 that were first written by romanising the Japanese, 20 turned out to be wrong, so none is trusted until it has been checked.
Where a source does not say, the field is left empty rather than guessed. An empty bath field means we have not established the answer, not that there is no bath.
How this is paid for
Booking links earn a commission at no additional cost to you. They have no bearing on which properties appear, in what order, or what is written about them — the list is fixed by two third parties before this site touches it, and several properties here have no booking link at all.
Relationship to Japan Ryokan Guide
This site is run by the people behind japanryokanguide.com, which covers a much larger and more general set of ryokan. Twelve properties appear on both. They are the same buildings, described differently: the other site describes a ryokan, this one places it among the certified stays.