Tenshin Okakura was a famous writer, art critic and scholar of the Meiji Period (1868 to 1912). Born in Yokohama in 1862, he passed away in Akakura Onsen in 1913 at the age of 50. He helped to establish the Tokyo School of Arts, was Curator of the Department of Japanese and Chinese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and is best known outside Japan for the English-language Book of Tea.

He first visited Akakura in May 1906 and was enchanted by the onsen, calling it, “The most scenic place in the world.” The next year he built his Akakura Villa, and came up with the idea of making Akakura Onsen the Barbizon of Asia.

Barbizon is a quiet, beautiful village on the outskirts of Paris, and is well known for the school of painters named after it. The Barbizon school included figures such as Jean-François Millet, known for works including The Gleaners and The Sower. Okakura moved the Japan Art Institute to Akakura Onsen as part of his effort to make it something like Barbazon, inviting his followers Taikan Yokoyama and Shinso Hishida, now both famous artists, to Akakura. While the two also very much liked Akakura, they simply felt it was too far away from Tokyo, and in those days took far too long to reach.