Sankara Hotel & Spa Yakushima

Yakushima is among the most ecologically singular places in Japan — an island off the southern tip of Kagoshima prefecture whose mountainous interior generates so much precipitation (up to 10 meters annually in some high-altitude areas) that it has sustained one of the world's most ancient living forests. The yakusugi cedar trees of Yakushima — cryptomeria growing at altitude, some estimated at over 7,000 years — were part of the UNESCO World Heritage designation that Yakushima received in 1993, the same year as Himeji Castle, an unusual coupling that signals the scale of the island's significance.

Sankara Hotel & Spa Yakushima occupies this landscape as a boutique property whose scale is deliberately proportioned to the environment it inhabits: small enough to be present within the island's character rather than overwhelming it, and serious enough in its hospitality to justify the considerable logistical commitment that reaching Yakushima requires (ferry from Kagoshima, or small aircraft). The spa uses the island's natural environment as both context and resource, incorporating the mineral-rich water and botanical elements of the surrounding forest.

Forest trekking to the yakusugi trees, the waterfalls and rivers of the island's interior, and the coastal landscapes of the surrounding East China Sea and Pacific provide the activities around which a Yakushima stay is organized. Sankara's dining uses the island's own produce — seafood from the surrounding waters, mountain vegetables, and the flying fish that are a Yakushima specialty — in a culinary program that reflects the island's ecological character.

For travelers who make an effort to reach places of genuine biological and aesthetic significance — who find that the world's most extraordinary environments are usually the most demanding to access — Yakushima and Sankara provide a reward proportionate to the commitment.