269 Setodacho, Setoda, on Ikuchijima near the midpoint of the Shimanami Kaido, opened in March 2021 in the former residence of the Horiuchi family, an estate they built in 1876 on a fortune made in shipping and salt. Twenty-two rooms stand in a new two-storey pavilion behind it; the Kyoto architect Shiro Miura led the restoration, and Adrian Zecha holds a co-founding role. It is the Library’s case of a hotel that also built its town a bathhouse.
The house
The Horiuchi settled in Setoda in the early seventeenth century and, the hotel says, thrived there for nearly two centuries on shipping and salt production; in 1876 they built the estate Azumi Setoda now occupies. The hotel’s own account of the renovation is that “the goal was to restore, not reinvent”, and it credits Shiro Miura, a Kyoto-based architect working in the sukiya-zukuri tradition, with leading the work. Its defining move is a set of tall fences, drawn from mari-gaki, that cut the plot into areas of different atmosphere. The hotel takes its name from the Azumi, a clan of ancient seafarers.
Monocle, writing in August 2021, names the proprietors as Yuta Oka and Fumitomo Hayase, with Adrian Zecha — the founder of Aman, then in his eighties — in a co-founding role, and Yoshi Kubota, formerly of Aman, as general manager. The hotel opened in March 2021 with 22 rooms in four types, arranged in a two-storey guest pavilion built around a courtyard framed by kakine fences. Directly across the street is yubune, a public bathhouse with fourteen guestrooms of its own, which Monocle describes as newly built by Azumi for its guests and the community alike, with mosaics by the artist Mai Miyake.
What distinguishes it
The bathhouse is the argument Azumi built yubune, a sentō, directly across the street, and Monocle describes it as made for the hotel’s guests and the town together, with mosaics by Mai Miyake and fourteen guestrooms of its own. The hotel publishes its hours — 07.00 to 22.00, with a jet bath, sauna and cold bath, and a lounge open around the clock — and shares its eighteen parking spaces with it. The house does not keep its amenity behind a gate.
A build date, not an estimate The hotel’s overview page gives 1876 for the estate and places the Horiuchi arrival in Setoda in the early seventeenth century. Its own pages then describe the building as both “140 year old” and standing “150 years”. The 1876 date is the one that can be checked against the other two, and it supports the longer figure.
Adrian Zecha’s role here is co-founder, not operator Monocle says Zecha, in his eighties when it wrote in August 2021, “has a co-founding role in Azumi”, and names Yuta Oka and Fumitomo Hayase as the proprietors; Oka also runs K5 in Tokyo. The general manager, Yoshi Kubota, came from Aman, the company Zecha founded. The hotel’s own long interview with Zecha covers his publishing career — Time from 1956, a resignation on 1 October 1960, Asia Magazine after it — and his line that he was not involved in hotels until he was 39.
Twenty-two rooms and no dilution The four room types are nine Niwa and nine Suzumi at 50 square metres for two guests, and two each of Niwasuzumi and Sorasuzumi at 70 square metres as maisonettes for three. Main dining seats 24, a private dining room 8, and a second private room upstairs 8. The hotel is about 60 minutes by car from Hiroshima Airport and 50 from JR Fukuyama Station.
This is a merchant’s plot on a village street, not an estate: the grounds end at the fences, the dining rooms seat 24 and 8, and the principal bathing is across the road in a building the public also uses. The island’s draw is the Shimanami Kaido, a cycling route, which is not everyone’s reason to travel. A guest who wants to be insulated from the town has come to a house whose point is the opposite.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.