Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Japanese Family for 46 Generations

Hōshi is a ryokan (a Japan­ese tra­di­tion­al inn) locat­ed in Komat­su, Japan, and it holds the dis­tinc­tion of being the 2nd old­est hotel in the world, and “the old­est still run­ning fam­i­ly busi­ness in the world” (per Wikipedia). Built in 718 AD, the ryokan has been oper­at­ed by the same fam­i­ly for 46 con­sec­u­tive gen­er­a­tions. Count them. 46 gen­er­a­tions.

Japan is a coun­try with deep tra­di­tions. And when you’re born into a fam­i­ly that’s the care­tak­er of a 1300-year-old insti­tu­tion, you find your­self strug­gling with issues most of us can’t imag­ine. That’s par­tic­u­lar­ly true when you’re the daugh­ter of the Hōshi fam­i­ly, a mod­ern woman who wants to break free from tra­di­tion. And yet his­to­ry and strong fam­i­ly expec­ta­tions keep call­ing her back.

The sto­ry of Hōshi ryokan is poignant­ly told in a short doc­u­men­tary above. It was shot in 2014 by the Ger­man film­mak­er Fritz Schu­mann.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan