Beppu: Living with the Hells

A deep gurgle rises from far below. The ground under your feet is split open.

This is Beppu, in Oita Prefecture. As early as the Nara period, between 710 and 794, this land was already written about in a book called the Bungo no Kuni Fudoki, a record of the province. What wells up from the cracks in the ground is no ordinary hot spring. It is scalding water above 90°C, shooting up from a spring vein 200 meters deep. No one can bathe in it; you can only look at it from outside the fence.

The people who saw the color of this water did not call it "beautiful." They named it jigoku: hell. Why did they call hot springs said to be Japan's finest "hell"? That question is the backbone of this story.

The answer is spread across a string of ponds, from the top of the slope to the bottom. Umi Jigoku, clear and blue. A pond where gray mud swells up like a monk's shaven head, then bursts. A pond whose steam cooked the rice offered to the god. A pond that traded its old name for one meaning "white." And the oldest pond of all, red as blood.

Why? You'll find out at each place. Once you take the first step, the steam at your feet will begin to look like the traces of 1,300 years.