History
The onsen was opened in 1615. It was discovered by an ally of Hideyori Toyotomi, who retreated here after the defeat of the Toyotomi forces at the summer siege of Osaka Castle. The onsen was named after a tool used in the making of traditional herbal medicine, which it resembled.
Oku-yagen Onsen was opened even earlier. In 862, Jikaku Daishi, who discovered Osorezan, suffered a great injury after he got lost. The story is that he was saved by a kappa (water imp) who immersed him in the waters of the 'Kappa-no-yu' bath, thereby healing his injury.
Read more about this topic: Yagen Valley
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)