Karino AyakoLast month, a new hotel renovated from a Japanese traditional house dating back 150 years, opened in a Kosuge, a small village in Yamanashi Prefecture, west of Tokyo. Under the concept “A village of 700 people coming together as 1 hotel,” the hotel was created with the aim to revitalize the area, which suffers severe population decline.
The hotel, under the name NIPPONIA Kosuge Genryu no Mura (meaning “Kosuge: village of the headstream”), has four rooms maintaining the warmth of the wooden building. It also features a restaurant, which offers seasonal menus using ingredients produced by local farmers. The hotel is operated by an all local staff, who not only show its guests around the hotel, but also around the village on bicycles, allowing them to communicate with local people and experience the village fully.
It was approximately a year ago that Edge Co., the operator of the hotel, was launched by people from the village office. The goal was to create a new accommodation model that spurs regional revitalization. Lodging businesses were closing down due to hotel managers reaching old age. Vacant houses were thus increasing in number as the population declined. Over the years, Kosuge’s population has dropped to 700 people, roughly a 1/3 of its prime time. In contrary, the number of tourists were on the rise, so the village had to come up with a new way to pass down its culture and its abundant nature to future generations.
With this new project, the village hopes it can solve both problems of vacant houses and population decline. Furthermore, it expects to transform the whole village into a hotel community, in which tourists can regard the regional hot spring as a hotel spa, the lanes as the hotel corridors and the Michi-no-eki (roadside station) as the hotel lobby. Meanwhile, the village people can serve as the hotel concierge, who make sure that the environment is kept clean and the needs of their guests answered. This kind of approach is bound to create new jobs for the village people in the long run.
Nipponia Kosuge Genryu no Mura is the first of its kind. Several others are expected to follow suit amongst the 70-100 vacant houses now available in the village. A night’s stay at the hotel with breakfast and dinner starts from 25,000 yen (235 $US) per person. It’s one thing to relax while staying at a hotel, but this hotel offers something more—it tells the story behind creating a place that the village people thrived to make happen to save their hometown.
[Reference website] Kosuge Genryu, a village of 700 people coming together as one hotel
