Ephemera for Lunch #22: Hotel Minaguchi-Ya

This week's theme of "Ephemera for Lunch" will be some of the things that my great-grandmother kept and scrapbooked during a mid-century trip to Japan. These mostly fall under the category of luggage tags and stickers. And it's a colorful, interesting lot. Here's the first one...

I'm assuming that the logo for Hotel Minaguchi-Ya is supposed to be stylized representation of Mount Fuji.

This is the same Hotel Minaguchi-Ya, I believe, that had its centuries-old history chronicled in the 1961 book Japanese Inn, by Oliver Statler.¹ The inn was located in Okitsu-juku, along the Tōkaidō (East Sea Road), one of Japan's most historic and written-about paths.

The Minaguchi-Ya has been closed for many years. According to the Samurai Archives Wiki:

"Unfortunately, the inn is no longer an inn. It went out of business in 1985, and by spring of the next year was being used by an area corporation for its private use. However, there is now a picture gallery open to the public on the grounds."

Footnote
1. The reviews on the Goodreads page for Japanese Inn are especially insightful.