Tazawa and Kutsukake Onsen — Spring Water Analysis, Temperature and Snowfall
田沢・沓掛温泉 · Nagano
Tazawa and Kutsukake Onsen (田沢・沓掛温泉) is a nationally designated onsen town in Nagano. 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
Two spa hamlets in Aoki village, Nagano, on the line of the ancient Tosando highway. The village holds a national treasure, the three-storey pagoda of Daihoji, built in 1333. Its roof curves like a crane opening its wings, and people turn back to look at it — hence its nickname, the pagoda you look back at.
Tazawa lies in a fold of Mt. Jukkan. It is said to date from the Asuka period, and the streets are still those of the Meiji era: stone paving, lattice doors, plastered storehouses. Shimazaki Toson stayed here and wrote about it. It is known as a spring for conceiving children — the mountain crone is said to have bathed here and borne Kintoki, the strongman of the old tales. A Jizo for safe childbirth stands in the hall nearby.
Kutsukake sits at the foot of Mt. Okami and is said to date from the Heian period. A provincial governor with an eye complaint bathed here and recovered, the story goes, so he built a hall and enshrined the spring's guardian. The hill behind resembles Mt. Ogura in Kyoto, and the bath is named for it. A traveller's handbook of 1810 lists it among 292 springs of the provinces. The novelist Katai Tayama was fond of it. Farmers from nearby still come to wash their vegetables in it.
Aoki has a saying: thunderstorms and peasant risings both start here. Five risings broke out in the Edo period, and the village honours their leaders as men of principle, keeping a drum troupe named for them.
Sources: 環境省 田沢・沓掛温泉 国民保養温泉地計画書
Snowfall in winter
| Per season | 154 cm |
| Rank | 31 of 77 ranked onsen |
| Within prefecture | 3 of 5 in Nagano |
| Against the median of 77 | +36 cm median 118 cm |
| Winter to winter | 322 cm 81–403 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
4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 田沢温泉 | 1.9 km | 36.1℃ warm | 9 alkaline | sulphur | 1961 |
| 田沢温泉 | 1.9 km | 49.2℃ hot | 8.8 alkaline | sulphur | 1961 |
| 田沢温泉1号 | 1.9 km | 35.9℃ warm | 9.2 alkaline | sulphur | 1966 |
| 田沢温泉2号 | 1.9 km | 40.2℃ warm | 9.3 alkaline | sulphur | 2000 |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Anraku-ji Temple安楽寺 (上田市) | Temple | 6.4 km |
| Mount Kamuriki冠着山 | Mountain | 9.4 km |
| Obasute Station姨捨駅 | Landmark | 13.2 km |
| Ueda Castle上田城 | Historic site | 13.7 km |
| Daio Wasabi Farm大王わさび農場 | Leisure | 17.3 km |
| Matsumoto Castle松本城 | Historic site | 19.6 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hijiri Kogen Ski Resort | 12 km | 302 of 397 |
| Sugadairakogen Pine Beak Ski Area | 25 km | 183 of 397 |
| Sugadaira Taro Area | 27 km | 192 of 397 |
| Sugadaira Kogen Davos Hill Ski Area | 29 km | 171 of 397 |
| Blanche Takayama | 29 km | 280 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.