Amanemu

Amanemu occupies a position of rare symbolic weight on the Japanese peninsula of Ise-Shima. The property sits within Ise-Shima National Park, its low-slung architecture folded into forested coastal terrain along the southern shoreline of Ago Bay — and within meaningful proximity to the Ise Grand Shrines, the most sacred site in Shinto tradition. This adjacency is not incidental; it shapes the register in which the resort operates, and the kind of journey that naturally unfolds around a stay here.

Aman's only onsen-dedicated resort in Japan, Amanemu draws its thermal waters from underground springs and delivers them to private outdoor baths within each villa. The architecture references sukiya-style building — the refined, light-filled aesthetic associated with tea ceremony and traditional Japanese interior space — rendered in timber, stone, and shoji screens that frame the surrounding landscape without imposing on it. Indoors and outdoors become permeable categories; the boundary is wherever the guest wishes it to be.

The Aman Spa offers extended bathing rituals that combine the property's onsen culture with the brand's tradition of slow, intentional wellness programming. Treatments draw on Japanese soaking traditions alongside the restorative practices Aman has developed across its global portfolio. The pace of the experience — unhurried, continuous, calibrated to the body's own tempo — is the point. Dining follows the same ethos, using regional Mie ingredients, including local seafood from the bay.

Guests regularly structure their time at Amanemu around a pilgrimage visit to Ise Jingu — the ancient shrines that have stood in this landscape for two thousand years and continue to be rebuilt on a twenty-year cycle to preserve the essence of impermanence. The juxtaposition of the spa's private thermal waters and the shrine's austere cedar groves creates a journey through two of Japan's most foundational ideas about restoration and renewal.