"I had spent three nights at hot springs near the center of the peninsula," Yasunari Kawabata wrote in his short novel "The Izu Dancer," published in 1925. "And now, my fourth day out of Tokyo, I was climbing toward Amagi Pass and South Izu."
In Kawabata's story, a high school student on a walking tour of the peninsula is captivated by a young dancer he espies among the members of a traveling troupe. The boy follows the dancer and her companions through the Amagi Tunnel until they reach Yugano Spa.
Without referring to the spot by name, the writer describes the approach to Fukudaya Inn in the Amagi Pass in a passage that holds true even today: "We climbed down over the rocks and stone steps 100 yards or so from the road," he says. "There was a public hot spring on the riverbed and just beyond it a bridge led to the garden of the inn." The narrator, it seems, was able to catch glimpses of geisha bathing in the public bath he describes.