Travel 4 minutes 03 July 2024

The First MICHELIN Key Hotels: All the Keys in Japan

The MICHELIN Guide announces top honors for Japanese hotels in 2024.

Japan Hotels MICHELIN Keys Editor's Pick Tokyo hotels

Tokyo by The MICHELIN Guide

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On July 4, 2024, the MICHELIN Guide revealed the brand new One, Two, and Three Key distinctions for the most outstanding hotels in Japan.

This announcement comes four years into a comprehensive refresh of our hotel selection. The MICHELIN Guide now includes over 6,000 hotels across the world, and not a single one is simply a room for the night. These are places that significantly add to your experience as a traveler, each vetted and judged excellent in five categories: architecture and interior design, quality and consistency of service, overall personality and character, value for the price, and a significant contribution to the guest experience in a particular setting.

Which brings us back to the Keys. The culmination of countless hours of evaluation by our team of experts, the Key hotels below represent the highlights of our broader selection. Like the MICHELIN Stars for restaurants, the MICHELIN Keys are our most outstanding hotels.

In total, the 2024 MICHELIN Guide hotel selection in Japan includes 6 Three Key hotels, 17 Two Key hotels, and 85 One Key hotels. Want to know more about the MICHELIN Key? Here’s everything you need to know. Or, head below to look at all the Keys.

NEW: Tokyo by The MICHELIN Guide – expert insights on where to dine, stay and explore

Nishimuraya Honkan — Toyooka, Japan

How To Look Through the List

Jump straight to the list or take a deeper dive into select Key hotels.

On this page, you’ll find every single one of our new Key distinctions, sorted by number of Keys and location in Japan. Click on any hotel to go straight to the hotel page to learn more about the nuts and bolts of each property. Alternatively, you can read any number of in-depth pieces about the aspects of the special craft that make up a Key hotel over on our magazine. While our anonymous selection team spends every day scouring the earth to vet favorite hotels and unearth hidden gems, our editorial team delves into the hotel craft by speaking directly to hoteliers.

Take a peek at a Two Key ryokan that seeks to embody the lost charm of the past.

Or, look inside a One Key ryokan that embraces modernity and modern art.

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Highlights of the Japan 2024 Key Hotel List

Janu Tokyo

Tokyo: Skyscrapers and Design Gems

Out of 6 Three Key hotels in Japan, half make their home in towers in Tokyo. At Bvlgari Hotel Tokyo, Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi, and the Palace Hotel Tokyo, expect the lavish spas, restaurants, and faultless service that have long made Tokyo among the luxury-hotel capitals of the world. Other Key hotels that stand tall over the megapolis: Andaz Tokyo, Aman Tokyo, and Bellustar Tokyo, A Pan Pacific Hotel.

But the city is home too to less intimidating masterpieces. Look to the contemporary Swedish design of K5 for perhaps the quintessential example of boutique personality in the capital, or to TRUNK (HOTEL) YOYOGI PARK for a small, Japanese and Danish-inspired accommodation wonderfully placed on the edge of an urban forest.

Worth a mention: Gora Kadan, a Three Key Hotel just outside Tokyo set in a verdant national park.

See More: The Architecture and Interior Design of Tokyo's Three Key Hotels

Suiran — Kyoto, Japan

Two Types of Ryokan: Deeply Traditional and Imaginatively Reinvented

We’re thrilled to celebrate many ryokan hotels in our inaugural list of Keys in Japan. Among the oldest forms of hospitality in history, the ryokan has no official, legal definition — it is simply a traditional Japanese inn, typically sporting tatami floors, shoji screens, kaiseki dinners, and onsen hot spring baths.

Our list of Key hotels features ryokan across the country, and you might split them into two categories. The first are the hyper-traditional ryokan, those with centuries-old roots like Ochiairo, Hiiragiya, and Asaba, that preserve the most traditional forms and customs of these storied inns.

On the other end, you have the modern ryokan — less tied to tradition, they sport updated or even radical forms of design, architecture, and luxuries; even if, at their core, they take their appeal from the same onsen baths, kaiseki dinners, and connection with the countryside that have drawn travelers for generations. Look to Zaborin, Suiran, A Luxury Collection Hotel, Kyoto, and Amanemu for some of the most superlative examples.

See More: The Reinvention of the Ryokan

Izumo Hotel the Cliff — Kumura, Japan

The Most Unique Japanese Key Hotels That Defy Categorization

It’s easy enough to put Japanese hotels into neat buckets. We’ve already given Tokyo credit for its luxury skyscrapers, and the countryside for its sublime ryokan. But amongst the Key hotels of Japan, we see a plenty of gems with no such easy categorization.

In Nagoya, the The Tower Hotel Nagoya takes a 1954-vintage television tower and builds a hotel around it; the tower’s iron support beams cut diagonally through the walls, floors, and ceilings of the rooms. In Kumura, Izumo Hotel The Cliff carves eight rooms like bunkers into the cliffside over the ocean. And in Naoshima, Benesse House is an art museum-hotel on a tiny, isolated island with installations by Jackson Pollock and James Turrell.

See More: The Most Unique Key Hotels in Japan