Japan's Most Popular Onsen Towns 2026 | Kusatsu, Arima, Dogo & More

National Popular Onsen Ranking

Prefecture-representative onsen towns, ranked by annual Wikipedia views (Sep 2025–Sep 2026).

Prefecture representatives, sorted by annual Wikipedia views (30 total)

Rank	Prefecture	Onsen Town	Annual Views
No. 1	Gunma	Kusatsu Onsen	78,592/yr
#2	Hyogo	Arima Onsen	73,619/yr
#3	Aomori	Sukayu Onsen	46,295/yr
#4	Ehime	Dogo Onsen	43,546/yr
#5	Gifu	Gero Onsen	42,197/yr
#6	Oita	Beppu Onsen	35,042/yr
#7	Akita	Tamagawa Onsen	34,997/yr
#8	Yamanashi	Isawa Onsen	27,960/yr
#9	Shimane	Tamatsukuri Onsen	27,298/yr
#10	Kumamoto	Kurokawa Onsen	26,578/yr
#11	Tottori	Misasa Onsen	26,558/yr
#12	Toyama	Unazuki Onsen	25,870/yr
#13	Fukushima	Iizaka Onsen	25,096/yr
#14	Kanagawa	Hakone-Yumoto Onsen	22,598/yr
#15	Fukui	Awara Onsen	21,027/yr
#16	Hokkaido	Noboribetsu Onsen	20,720/yr
#17	Miyagi	Naruko Onsen	18,941/yr
#18	Saga	Ureshino Onsen	17,775/yr
#19	Nara	Dorogawa Onsen	17,719/yr
#20	Yamagata	Zao Onsen	17,062/yr
#21	Shizuoka	Atami Onsen	16,974/yr
#22	Ishikawa	Yamashiro Onsen	16,694/yr
#23	Yamaguchi	Yuda Onsen	15,091/yr
#24	Osaka	Minoh Onsen	12,043/yr
#25	Okayama	Yubara Onsen	10,837/yr
#26	Kagoshima	Ibusuki Onsen	10,406/yr
#27	Nagasaki	Unzen Onsen	9,782/yr
#28	Nagano	Shibu Onsen	9,349/yr
#29	Niigata	Echigo-Yuzawa Onsen	9,162/yr
#30	Iwate	Hanamaki Onsen	8,961/yr

What the Data Shows

No. 1 is Kusatsu Onsen in Gunma (78,592 annual views). Gunma doesn't rank in the top 5 prefectures for either spring count or onsen-area count — Kusatsu's fame stands almost entirely on its own.
Even the top 15 span every region of Japan — Tohoku (Aomori, Akita, Fukushima), Kanto (Gunma, Kanagawa), Chubu (Gifu, Yamanashi, Toyama, Fukui), Kinki (Hyogo), Chugoku (Shimane, Tottori), Shikoku (Ehime), and Kyushu (Oita, Kumamoto) — with no single region dominating.
Oita, which leads the country in spring count (5,094 sources, Beppu Onsen), ranks only 6th; Hokkaido, which leads in onsen-area count (226 areas, Noboribetsu Onsen), ranks 16th. Raw hot-spring infrastructure doesn't map cleanly onto Wikipedia-measured popularity.

This ranking covers the 41 of Japan's 47 prefectures for which Wikipedia view data could be confirmed, totaling 30 entries.

Source: Wikimedia REST API, https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/ (ja.wikipedia). Aggregation window 20250901–20260901, data fetched 2026-09-19. Only one featured onsen town per prefecture is included (multiple onsen towns within the same prefecture are not compared).