Mosaic

A wall-mounted mosaic of a kappa, the green river spirit of Japanese folklore, looks out from the wall of Kinugawa Kan's dining hall. The mosaic is large, easily two metres across, made up of small ceramic tiles in green, blue, white, and yellow. The kappa is shown in profile, holding what looks like a fish. The grout between the tiles has yellowed and cracked in places, but the mosaic itself is largely intact. None of the tiles have been pried off. The wall around it has done worse: paint flaking, water marks streaking down from the ceiling.

The kappa is the namesake of the hotel's bathhouse, the Kappa Onsen, and the dining hall mosaic was the visual hook that linked the two. Diners would have eaten under it; bathers would have walked past it on the way to the baths. Mosaics like this were typical features of Japanese hotels of the period. Each property tried to develop a distinct iconography that would set it apart. Most of those mosaics have gone. Pulled off the walls when the hotels were renovated, or smashed when the buildings were demolished. The Kinugawa Kan kappa is one of the few that has survived in place, partly because the hotel was abandoned rather than demolished after the 1999 bankruptcy.