Dining Room

The dining room at Kinugawa Kan runs along the river-side face of the building, with a long row of windows looking out across the Kinugawa gorge to the cliffs and ryokans on the opposite bank. The room is fitted with low banquet-style tables and zaisu floor chairs, arranged in long parallel rows. A porter's trolley sits against one wall, its top piled with dust. The tatami flooring is stained in patches where moisture worked at the matting. The walls carry traditional decorative panels at intervals. Across the gorge, a tall hotel building rises above the trees, its facade still intact, still operating. The light through the windows falls across the room in long horizontal bars.

The dining hall hosted the multi-course kaiseki dinners that were the centrepiece of the ryokan experience at Kinugawa Kan. Guests changed into yukata in their rooms before dinner and walked down to the hall in slippers. Servers brought each course in turn. The view across the gorge to the hotels opposite was part of the meal. Kinugawa Kan opened in December 1942 and ran for nearly six decades before entering business suspension in June 1999. The porter's trolley in this photograph stayed in place when the building was sealed, along with the tables, the chairs, and the kaiseki dishes left in the kitchen behind.