Kazawa Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
鹿沢温泉 · Gunma
Kazawa Onsen (鹿沢温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Gunma. We measured how much snow its winters bring, using the same method as for the 3,069 ski areas on this site.
How this place came to be
The spring rises at 1,525 m on the flank of Mt. Yunomaru (2,101 m). It appears by name in a 1656 document recording a border dispute. The name is said to come from a wounded deer seen healing in the water — a legend, not a record.
For most of its history you reached it on foot, up a twelve-kilometre mountain path. A hundred stone Kannon statues were set along that path, one every 108 metres, and you can still count your way up past them. A fire in 1918 destroyed the town, leaving a single inn, the Koyokan. The water was piped down the mountain, and that lower settlement is today's Shin-Kazawa Onsen.
This is also where "Yukiyama Sanka" was written — the best-known mountaineering song in Japan. A stone marks the spot opposite the Koyokan, and Tsumagoi village still plays the melody as its noon chime.
In early summer 600,000 azalea plants cover the slopes; they were made a national natural monument in 1956. In winter the Kazawa Snow Area is close by.
Sources: 環境省 鹿沢温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 136 cm |
| Rank | 34 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 3 of 3 in Gunma |
| Against the median of 77 | +18 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 107 cm 95–202 cm, leanest to deepest of twelve |
Find a place to stay · Open in maps
"Find a place to stay" searches Rakuten Travel and contains advertising; we may earn a commission on bookings made through it. The snowfall figures and ranking are calculated independently of that.
We do not link to an official site. We have not verified URLs for all 79 towns, and guessing would send you somewhere wrong. They will be added once checked.
More places to look
Just the bath
Day passes for hot springs are sold through Asoview. Japanese only.
The list covers the whole prefecture — it cannot be narrowed to this town.
Hot springs nearby, as analysed
7 hot spring sources with published analyses lie within 3 km of the centre of this onsen town, nearest first.
| Source | Distance | Temperature | pH | Type | Analysed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 鹿沢温泉雲井の湯 | 0.8 km | — | 6.6 neutral | bicarbonate | 1986 |
| 鹿沢温泉東雲の湯 | 0.8 km | — | 6.8 neutral | simple | 1989 |
| 鹿沢温泉東急泉 | 0.8 km | 27℃ lukewarm | 6.7 neutral | simple | 1982 |
| 鹿沢温泉竜宮の湯 | 0.8 km | 39.5℃ warm | 7 neutral | bicarbonate | 1982 |
| 鹿沢温泉竜宮の湯 | 0.8 km | — | 6.9 neutral | bicarbonate | 1989 |
These are analyses of hot spring sources, not a list of baths you can visit. They date from 1910 to 2005, many from decades ago, so today’s temperature and chemistry may differ. Names are as recorded in Japanese. Temperature and pH bands follow Japan’s standard for analysing hot springs.
Source: processed from the hot spring analysis data in the Geothermal Information Database (GRES-DB), Geological Survey of Japan, AIST
Worth seeing nearby
Places within 20 km of this onsen town, chosen from those most read about on Wikipedia, favouring places with an English Wikipedia article, and listed nearest first.
| Place | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Mount Azumaya四阿山 | Mountain | 7.4 km |
| Mount Neko根子岳 (長野県) | Mountain | 8.8 km |
| Kanbara Kannondō鎌原観音堂 | Temple | 10.1 km |
| Mount Asama浅間山 | Mountain | 10.8 km |
| Ueda Castle上田城 | Historic site | 19.8 km |
| Karuizawa軽井沢町 | Old streets | 20 km |
Based on the Japanese Wikipedia lists of sights in each prefecture, as compiled in travel-log-data (CC BY-SA 4.0). English names from Wikidata (CC0). The content of this section is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Ski areas nearby
Up to five within 40 km, straight-line, nearest first. Quality rank is out of the 397 Japanese ski areas.
| Ski area | Distance | Quality rank |
|---|---|---|
| Kazawa Snow Area | 2 km | 263 of 397 |
| Takamine Mountain Park Ski Area | 8 km | 200 of 397 |
| Palcall Tsumagoi Resort Ski & Hotel | 9 km | 149 of 397 |
| Sugadaira Kogen Davos Hill Ski Area | 11 km | 171 of 397 |
| Sugadaira Taro Area | 12 km | 192 of 397 |
These snowfall figures are estimates
The snowfall shown here is an estimate produced by a weather model, not a record of what actually fell.
We compared it against 63 Japan Meteorological Agency weather stations to see how far off it is. On average it comes to about six tenths of the real figure — it runs low. And it runs low by different amounts in different places: some read barely a third of what was measured, others match almost exactly. Mountains tend to read lowest.
We tried scaling everything up by a fixed amount to correct for it. It barely helped, because the error differs from place to place.
So treat these numbers as a guide to roughly where somewhere sits, not a precise figure. There is no meaning in the gap between first and second, or between 30th and 35th. Large differences between regions are real and can be read as they are.
We considered correcting the figures against the observations. But this ranking covers 3,069 ski areas across ten countries, and only Japan can be checked against weather stations. Correcting Japan alone would lift Japanese resorts above the Alps and North America with nothing behind it. Every place here is measured the same way instead.
Where a nearby weather station can be used, we print what it actually recorded on that ski area's own page.