We check out the new Six Senses Kyoto

I slowly rub my hands together and bring my palms up to my face. I close my eyes as instructed and breathe in gently. A delicate, sweet, earthy scent fills my nostrils as I’m invited to centre myself in time and space. I open my eyes and take a sip of the tea created just for this moment: a deeply aromatic blend of mugwort, lemon verbena and angelica root. I begin to feel remarkably relaxed and forget about the hordes of tourists in the streets outside.

This welcome ritual, inspired by the Buddhist zuko practice of cleansing one’s hands with incense, is offered to all guests at Six Senses Kyoto, the new 81-room luxury hotel which opened in the increasingly popular Japanese city in April. The ritual is an example of the “emotional hospitality� hallmark of all 26 Six Senses properties worldwide, but is also a very effective way of plugging each visitor directly into the culture of this historic place.

The flavours of the tea I’m offered on arrival, for example, are a representation of kokuu, one of the many micro-seasons or sekki of Japan. This brief, two-week period following the cherry blossoms, is when the trees are full of tender lime-green leaves: as I sip, I’m looking at those exact colours in the central garden around which the hotel’s rooms are built.

This is only the second Six Senses to be located in a major urban environment (the other, in Rome, opened in March 2023) as opposed to a tropical island or halfway up a remote mountain, and is the first Six Senses in Japan. It’s plum in the heart of Kyoto, surrounded by houses and shrines, across the road from the Four Seasons, around the corner from the National Museum. This sense of immersion in a city and its culture is found throughout the building.

The aesthetic, created by Singapore’s BLINK Design Group, takes its cues from the arts and crafts of the Heian period (794-1185) when Kyoto was the Japanese capital. Behind reception in the huge main lobby is a screen made up of more than 500 locally made Raku-yaki tiles that echo the silhouette of sacred Mount Kurama; on the opposite wall is a large sculpture featuring the famous frolicking frogs and rascally rabbits of The Tale of Genji, the 11th-century literary work considered the precursor to modern-day manga.

Each of the rooms is full of similar details that tap into this cultural narrative, from the individually crafted door lights in the shape of Shinto shrine foxes to exquisite paintings and furniture created by local artists and artisans.

The rooms that capture this essence of place perhaps best of all are the two premier garden suites: as well as being secluded from the rest of the hotel and bathed in particularly beautiful, dappled afternoon light, each has its own private Japanese garden, as well as direct access to a local shrine and an extensive planting of herbs and tea that supplies the hotel’s restaurant and café.