Aman Resorts has, over more than three decades, built a reputation that functions almost as a religion among a certain kind of traveler. The brand’s adherents — called “Aman junkies” in the hospitality industry, without irony — return to properties across the world with the loyalty of pilgrims, drawn back by something that competitors have spent millions attempting to replicate without quite capturing. The Aman ethos is difficult to articulate precisely: it has to do with scale (small, always), with quiet (genuine, not performed), with design that feels inevitable rather than decorative, and with a standard of personal service that anticipates rather than responds.
Japan is perhaps the country that best understands what Aman is trying to do. The concepts at the heart of the brand — wabi-sabi, ma (negative space), omotenashi — are Japanese in origin, and Aman’s three properties in Japan each interpret those concepts through a different lens. Choosing between them is, in a genuine sense, a philosophical choice about what kind of Japan you want to experience.
Aman Tokyo: The Urban Flagship
Aman Tokyo, which opened in 2014, occupies the top six floors of the Otemachi Tower in central Tokyo, and it is in almost every measurable respect an extraordinary hotel. The lobby alone — a 30-meter-high atrium clad in washi paper and hinoki cypress, with a traditional garden suspended above the entrance desk — is one of the great hotel arrival experiences in Asia. It announces immediately that this is not a conventional luxury hotel.
The 84 rooms are among the largest in Tokyo, beginning at 71 square meters and rising to suites that exceed 200 square meters. The design is emphatically Japanese — natural materials, restrained palette, soaking tubs positioned to face the city — but with a spatial generosity that feels entirely Western in its understanding of how much room a person deserves. Views from upper floors encompass the Imperial Palace gardens, the Tokyo skyline, and on clear days, Fuji on the horizon.
Aman Tokyo works best as a base for urban exploration. The location gives easy access to the Imperial Palace, Ginza, and Tokyo’s extraordinary restaurant landscape. The hotel’s own dining, particularly the Japanese restaurant on the lobby floor, is serious enough to compete with Tokyo’s standalone establishments. The spa is Aman’s signature format: vast, serene, unhurried, centered on a 30-meter indoor pool surrounded by cedar and stone.
The property is also the most accessible Aman in Japan for first-time visitors — English-speaking staff are fluent, the concierge team understands Western travelers’ orientation challenges, and the combination of luxury comfort and urban convenience makes it a reliable anchor for a complex Japan itinerary.
Suites begin at approximately $2,200 per night. The best rooms face the Imperial Palace; request them specifically.
Amanemu: Ryokan Reinvented
Amanemu, which opened in 2016 on the Ago Bay in Mie Prefecture — the same coastline that hosts the Grand Shrines of Ise, Japan’s most sacred Shinto site — represents Aman’s interpretation of the traditional Japanese ryokan. It is, by broad consensus, one of the most beautiful hotels in Asia.
The property consists of 24 suites and 4 villas, each a private pavilion set within a forested hillside above the bay. The architecture channels sukiya-zukuri, the traditional Japanese residential style, with deep timber eaves, shoji screens, and a profound dialogue between interior and exterior that Japanese architecture has always conducted more fluently than any other tradition. Every suite has a private onsen — fed by mineral-rich waters drawn from Shima Onsen — and a private outdoor terrace oriented toward the water or the forest.
The onsen experience at Amanemu is its defining feature and genuine distinction. Two outdoor bath areas serve the communal guest experience, alongside indoor bathing facilities and private in-suite soaking. The water quality is extraordinary — the spring that feeds the property has been used for therapeutic bathing for centuries — and the ritual of bathing here, performed multiple times daily in the Japanese tradition, becomes one of the most restorative experiences the property offers.
Amanemu requires more intention than Aman Tokyo. A 45-minute drive from the nearest station (Toba), and further still from Nagoya or Osaka, it is not a property you visit briefly in transit. Two nights is the minimum; three or four nights allow the property’s slower rhythms to properly accumulate. It pairs naturally with a visit to the Ise Grand Shrine, a 45-minute drive, which is an experience of profound Shinto simplicity that aligns beautifully with Amanemu’s own aesthetic temperament.
Rates begin at approximately $2,800 per night and include access to all facilities and one traditional Japanese multi-course kaiseki meal per day.
Amangani: The Anomaly Worth Explaining
Amangani, strictly speaking, is not in Japan — it is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The name causes confusion in any discussion of Aman’s Japan portfolio, and the distinction matters. If you are planning a Japan itinerary and looking for a third Aman option in-country, the answer at present is that Aman Tokyo and Amanemu are the Japanese properties. (Aman has announced additional Japan locations, including a highly anticipated property in Kyoto, though that project’s timing has shifted repeatedly.)
Amangani in Wyoming is nonetheless worth discussing as context, because it illustrates the range of what the Aman brand represents. Where Aman Tokyo is urban and vertical, and Amanemu is immersed in forest and coastal Japan, Amangani is a mountain lodge experience — a property perched on a ridge above the Snake River Valley with views of the Teton Range that constitute one of the great hotel panoramas in North America. It demonstrates that the Aman philosophy — restraint, materiality, profound connection to landscape — translates across cultures and climates.
Building the Right Japan Itinerary
For most travelers visiting Japan for the first time, Aman Tokyo makes sense as an anchor: two to three nights in the capital, then onward. Amanemu belongs in the middle or at the end of a Japan trip, when the pace has slowed and the appetite for immersive, unhurried experience is highest.
A considered itinerary might look like this: three nights at Aman Tokyo for arrival and urban orientation, followed by the Shinkansen to Kyoto for independent exploration, then a transfer to Mie Prefecture for three nights at Amanemu before departure from Nagoya or Osaka. This circuit covers the cultural and aesthetic range of Japan’s heartland while providing two of the finest hotel experiences in Asia.
The Kyoto Aman, when it opens, will add a third Japanese chapter that many Japan travelers have been anticipating for years. In the meantime, the existing pair is more than sufficient reason to add Japan to the Aman itinerary — and perhaps to understand why the brand’s followers plan their travel the way they do.
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