Michelin Green Guide Japan — Every Starred Place, Region by Region

What the Michelin Green Guide is, and which edition says what

The Michelin Green Guide (Le Guide Vert) is the travel guide, not the restaurant guide. It rates destinations — towns, temples, gardens, viewpoints, museum holdings — on a three-star scale. The Japan volume is published in France, and the ratings people quote come from different editions, which is where most of the confusion starts.

Every star on this site is written with the edition that awarded it. A sight listed as three-star in 2015 is not automatically three-star today, and a few are not even open any more — the old Hida Takayama Museum of Art closed in 2020 (a museum of the same name opened in 2024) and the Museum of the Little Prince in Hakone in 2023. Those are flagged where they appear.

Where the 115 three stars are

Three stars are not spread evenly. Kyoto city alone holds 22 and Tokyo 26 — together 48 of the 115 — because the guide stars the statues, gardens and buildings inside a site separately from the site itself. Two regions in this index hold none at all: Izu and Okinawa, where the highest rating is two stars.

All 23 regional guides, with their star counts

Takayama & Shirakawa-go’s three ★★★ include the old Hida Takayama Museum of Art — three-star in the 2015 edition, closed in May 2020. A museum of the same name opened in 2024 inside the hotel built on the site; the stars counted here are the old museum’s.

How the guide counts — why 1,111 is not 1,111 places

The guide does not star only destinations. Inside a single temple it will star the temple, a hall within it, a statue inside that hall and the garden behind it — each as its own entry. Sanjusangen-do is three-star, and so are its thousand standing Kannon, its seated Senju Kannon and its twenty-eight guardian deities. That is four three-star entries at one address.

So “1,111 starred entries” is a count of entries, not of separate locations. We count it this way because it is what the guide does, and because it is the only way to show that Tokyo’s 26 three stars include the Honkan at the Tokyo National Museum and a Glass Hall in Marunouchi, not 26 separate days out. Anyone quoting a smaller number is probably counting sites; anyone quoting a larger one is probably including unstarred listings.

Two more things we do that most summaries do not. Every star is dated to its edition, because 2015 and 2020 disagree in places and 2025 revisits the headline ratings. And closures stay in, marked as closed, because a guidebook from 2015 will send you to a Takayama museum that shut in 2020 (its successor opened in 2024).

Where to start, by how long you have

One rule that survives every version of this trip: do not cross regions to collect stars. Kyoto to Hokkaido for a three-star lake costs a day each way. Pick the region, then work down its list.

Michelin Green Guide Japan — FAQ

Star ratings: ★★★ worth a special journey / ★★☆ worth a detour / ★☆☆ interesting. Stars come from the 4th (2015) or 6th (2020) edition of the Michelin Green Guide Japan, as noted for each sight in the regional articles, and are reviewed with every edition. “Starred entries” counts every entry the guide awards stars to — including buildings inside a site, museum pieces, viewpoints and routes — so it is not a count of separate locations. This index is a superset of the book: it adds access, current opening status and pricing that the guide does not carry, and it does not reproduce the guide’s text.

Photo credits: Blue Pond in Biei, Hokkaido: MaedaAkihiko, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Moss-covered forest at Shiratani Unsuikyo, Yakushima: MaedaAkihiko, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Adachi Museum of Art garden in Shimane: 663highland, CC BY 2.5 (Wikimedia Commons) / Kiyomizu-dera in autumn colors, Kyoto: Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Byodoin Phoenix Hall reflected in the pond in Uji: 663highland, CC BY 2.5 (Wikimedia Commons) / Great Buddha Hall of Todai-ji in Nara: ONO Masanobu, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Himeji Castle with cherry blossoms: Seattleite7, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Great Buddha of Kamakura at Kotoku-in: あかれぎ, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Yomeimon gate of Nikko Toshogu Shrine: Koichi Sato, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Irozaki cliffs on the Izu Peninsula: Ahomin, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Matsumoto Castle and its moat in Nagano: 663highland, CC BY 2.5 (Wikimedia Commons) / Uji Bridge at Ise Jingu Shrine: Zairon, CC BY 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Nachi Falls and Seiganto-ji pagoda in Wakayama: Zairon, CC BY 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / The Great Torii of Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima: Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Dogo Onsen Honkan at dusk in Matsuyama: Japanexperterna.se, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Matsushima islands at dusk: lumoplank, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Kabira Bay on Ishigaki Island, Okinawa: 663highland, CC BY 2.5 (Wikimedia Commons) / Limited express Thunderbird at Kyoto Station: airlines470, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Mount Fuji framed by cherry blossoms at Lake Kawaguchi: Midori, CC BY 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Pine trees at Kasumigaike pond in Kenrokuen Garden, Kanazawa: KimonBerlin, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Kinkaku-ji Golden Pavilion and its pond in Kyoto: Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Torii gate and approach at Meiji Jingu Shrine in Tokyo: William J Sisti from Morristown, NJ, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Cape Manzamo cliffs and the sea in Okinawa: FoxyStranger Kawasaki, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Shirakawa-go village covered in snow: Suicasmo, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons) / Mikurigaike pond at Murodo on the Tateyama Kurobe route: Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)