Amanemu Marks 10 Years With New Ways To Experience Ise-Shima

Ise Jingu has been rebuilt every 20 years for 1,300 years, an act that treats impermanence itself as sacred. It is an unusual inheritance for a hotel to draw on. Yet Amanemu, marking 10 years on the Ise-Shima coast this year, has built its anniversary programme almost entirely around the premise that nothing there is meant to stay fixed—least of all, the guest’s understanding of the place.

The resort is Aman’s first in Japan. It sits on a hilltop above Ago Bay in Mie Prefecture, a region so intertwined with Shinto ritual and Imperial provisioning that locals have long called it Miketsukuni (“the Land of Royal Provisions).

From June 2026, Amanemu has transposed this context into a variety of complimentary experiences. A decade after its opening, Amanemu deepens its ties to Ise-Shima with a full calendar of shrine visits, pearl-diving heritage and two new spa journeys—one offered for every night of a guest’s stay.

There is a private visit to Ise Jingu with a local guide, structured around the role of ujiko, or shrine parishioner.

Guests spend an afternoon experiencing purification rites and shrine maintenance and, at the end of it, receivesa goshuin stamp, traditionally a mark of pilgrimage attendance. Unlike passive temple tours: guests are invited to participate, and not simply observe.

Ago Bay itself, ringed with pearl and seaweed rafts, has shaped the region’s identity through the Ama, the free-diving women who have harvested abalone and lobster from these waters for generations.

Amanemu’s new offerings expound that heritage, pairing existing boat trips and seafood lunches with Ama divers with a pearl jewellery-making session drawing on Ise-Shima’s cultivation history. A waterfall meditation at Ama-no-Iwato, a  mythological site, and stargazing with the resort’s in-house guide round out the programme.

Cultural workshops, including indigo dyeing and work with gikakushi paper and hemp, extend the same sensibility to craft-making experiences by connecting guests with local artisans. Meals follow suit, with Matsusaka beef and Ise lobster anchoring a dinner menu built on the region’s Imperial-provisioning past.

The spa programme, marking its own 10th anniversary, adds two treatments to Amanemu’s 2,000 sqm onsen facility. Forest and Water, a 120-minute treatment, draws on the story of Amaterasu Omikami’s discovery of Ise’s sacred lands, combining onsen water therapies with pearl salt sourced from Ago Bay.

Essence of Tokowaka, a two-day programme, takes its structure from the Shikinen Sengu, the ritual dismantling and rebuilding of Ise Jingu, alternating twelve sessions of yoga, breathwork, acupuncture, moxibustion and bodywork around the Five Elements.

Getting there, too, is part of the experience: bullet train from Tokyo via Nagoya, with Mount Fuji visible along the route. Or if you prefer, a private helicopter landing directly on the property’s helipad with the coastline presenting itself before the hotel comes into view.

Amanemu