A Golfing Nation Of Its Own
Japan is one of the great golfing countries. It has roughly 2,300 courses, the second-highest total of any nation after the United States, a professional scene that produced Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama, and a culture around the game that a first-time visitor will find quite unlike golf anywhere else. Some of the finest courses in Asia are here, several of them laid out in the early 1930s by the English architect Charles Hugh Alison, whose deep, steep bunkers were so striking that Japanese golfers still call any penal bunker an Alison bunker. This guide walks the ten courses worth the trip, explains the culture from the multi-tier driving range to the halfway lunch and the hot-spring bath, and looks at where Rory McIlroy fits into the Japanese golfing story, including the Olympic bronze that slipped away at Kasumigaseki.
Golf arrived in Japan through Kobe's foreign community in the early twentieth century, boomed into a corporate status symbol in the 1980s asset bubble, and then broadened into a mainstream pastime after the bubble burst. What survives from all three eras is a game taken seriously, played tidily, and wrapped in rituals that make a round a full-day occasion rather than a quick eighteen.
The Headline Numbers
~2,300
golf courses, second only to the USA
1932
Hirono opens, Alison's masterpiece
2021
Olympic golf at Kasumigaseki
2019
Zozo, the PGA Tour's first Japan event
2021
Matsuyama wins the Masters
1968
JLPGA founded, now among the richest
The Alison Legacy
You cannot understand the top of Japanese golf without Charles Hugh Alison. A partner of the great English architect Harry Colt, Alison travelled to Japan across the winter of 1930 to 1931 and, in a few short months, left his signature on four of the country's most important courses: Tokyo Golf Club, Hirono, Naruo and Kasumigaseki. His trademark was a deep, steep-faced, boldly shaped bunker set to punish and to intimidate in equal measure.
The style was so new to Japan that it acquired his name. To this day, Japanese golfers call a deep, penal bunker an Alison bunker, rendered in Japanese as Arison bankaa. It is one of the very few cases anywhere in golf of an architect's name becoming a common noun. Alison never built many courses in Japan himself, but his influence set the template for what a great Japanese course should look like, and his best work, Hirono, has topped the national rankings for the best part of a century.
Ten Courses Worth The Trip
Japan's best courses divide into three groups: the pre-war Golden Age designs, mostly Alison's, that sit at the top of every ranking; the championship venues that host the touring pros; and the resort courses that a visitor can most easily book. Here are ten, from the untouchable classics to the tournament stages.
NO. 1Hirono Golf ClubMiki, Hyogo · Alison, 1932
The finest course in Japan and one of the best in Asia, often called the Pine Valley of Japan for its sandy, heathland character. Alison routed it across natural ravines, ponds and rolling woodland near Kobe, and defended it with the deep bunkers that carry his name. A private members' club, and the yardstick every other Japanese course is measured against.
NO. 2Kawana Hotel, Fuji CourseIto, Shizuoka · Alison, 1936
Alison's other Japanese masterpiece and the one a visitor can actually play, attached to the Kawana resort on the Izu Peninsula. The Fuji Course tumbles along cliffs above the Pacific with Mount Fuji framed beyond, which has earned it the nickname the Pebble Beach of Japan. Long hosted the Fujisankei Classic on the domestic tour.
NO. 3Kasumigaseki Country Club, EastKawagoe, Saitama · 1929, Olympic venue
The 2020 Olympic golf venue, played in 2021. A subtly rolling parkland course opened in 1929, carrying Alison's bunkering influence and revised by Tom and Logan Fazio before the Games. It also staged the first World Cup of golf, then the Canada Cup, in 1957. Xander Schauffele and Nelly Korda took the Olympic golds here.
NO. 4Naruo Golf ClubKawanishi, Hyogo · Golden Age classic
A revered course in the hills near Kobe, routinely ranked in Japan's top three alongside Hirono. A tight, strategic, wonderfully natural design threaded through a valley, with an intimate, old-world members' feel. Rarely seen by outsiders and all the more prized for it.
NO. 5Tokyo Golf ClubSayama, Saitama · Alison-influenced
One of Japan's oldest and most historic clubs, its current course north-west of Tokyo shaped under Alison's influence. A dignified parkland test that has hosted the Japan Open many times and remains one of the most respected private clubs in the country.
NO. 6Taiheiyo Club, GotembaGotemba, Shizuoka · Taiheiyo Masters
A manicured championship course at the foot of Mount Fuji that hosts the Taiheiyo Masters, one of the domestic tour's flagship autumn events. Immaculate conditioning, dramatic mountain backdrop and a genuine tournament pedigree make it a bucket-list round for visitors who want to play a course the pros know.
NO. 7Accordia Golf Narashino C.C.Inzai, Chiba · Zozo Championship
The home of the Zozo Championship, now the Baycurrent Classic, the PGA Tour's official event in Japan. This is where Tiger Woods won his record-tying 82nd Tour title in 2019 and where Hideki Matsuyama won in front of a home crowd in 2021. A parkland course near Tokyo set up to yield low scores when the world's best come to town.
NO. 8Phoenix Country ClubMiyazaki · Dunlop Phoenix
A resort course on the subtropical southern island of Kyushu that has hosted the Dunlop Phoenix Tournament since 1974, one of the richest and most glamorous events on the Japanese calendar. Its winners' board reads like a who's who of world golf, Tiger Woods among them, and the resort setting makes it an easy and rewarding visitor round.
NO. 9Oarai Golf ClubOarai, Ibaraki · seaside links feel
A rare taste of firm, wind-blown, links-style golf on Japan's Pacific coast north-east of Tokyo, laid out among pines close to the sea. Long a fixture in the national top 100 and a favourite of purists who want something closer to the British and Irish golf that shaped Rory McIlroy than the manicured parkland that dominates elsewhere in Japan.
NO. 10Karuizawa 72 GolfKaruizawa, Nagano · highland resort
The heart of Japan's most famous summer golf destination, a cool highland resort town in the Nagano mountains that has been a retreat from the Tokyo heat for over a century. A large complex of courses set among forest and volcano views, and the easiest way for a visitor to combine several rounds with a genuinely Japanese resort holiday.
How A Round Actually Works
Playing golf in Japan is a full-day event with its own rhythm, and knowing the rhythm before you arrive makes the difference between feeling lost and feeling looked after. Here is what a typical visitor round involves.
Courses nationwideAround 2,300, second only to the USA
BookingMostly open to visitors, often online
The halfway lunch45 to 60 minutes after the ninth
CaddieOften included, traditionally female
After the roundOnsen, a communal hot-spring bath
Dress codeNeat, jacket at some clubhouses
Cheapest daysWeekdays over weekends
PracticeMulti-tier city driving ranges
The halfway lunch
Almost every Japanese course builds a lunch break of 45 minutes to an hour into the round, taken in the clubhouse after the ninth hole before the group heads out for the back nine. It is not optional; the tee sheet is scheduled around it. Visitors used to walking from the ninth green straight to the tenth tee are often surprised, but the sit-down halfway meal, everything from curry rice to a proper set lunch, is one of the parts regular players value most.
Caddies, carts and the onsen
Many clubs still provide a caddie, traditionally a woman in a uniform and wide-brimmed hat who manages the whole group, though self-play with a GPS cart is increasingly common and cheaper. And a great many courses, especially in the mountains and near hot-spring regions, finish the day with an onsen, a communal hot-spring bath, before players change and drive home. It is the most Japanese thing about a Japanese round.
The Multi-Tier Driving Range
The single most recognisable image of golf in Japan is the city driving range: a two or three-storey structure wrapped in enormous green netting, tucked between apartment blocks and rail lines, floodlit at night, with rows of players hitting balls out into the dark. Land in Japanese cities is scarce and expensive, so the range goes upward instead of outward, and many are fitted with automatic tee-up machines that pop a fresh ball onto the tee every few seconds without the golfer bending down.
These ranges are woven into daily life. A salaryman can hit a bucket after work; a junior can grind for hours; the whole family can go on a weekend. It is a big part of why a country with so little space produces so many good players, and why golf feels present in Japanese cities in a way it does not in most of the world.
Golf in Japan goes upward. Where else does the driving range have three floors, automatic tees, and a train line running underneath it.
The Japanese city driving range
Tokyo 2020: The Olympics At Kasumigaseki
The modern high point of Japanese golf on the world stage was the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, postponed a year by the pandemic and staged in 2021 at the East Course of Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama Prefecture. It put a 1929 Alison-influenced course, revised by Tom and Logan Fazio, in front of a global audience.
| Event | Gold | Note |
|---|
| Men's individual | Xander Schauffele (USA) | 18 under par, one clear of Rory Sabbatini's silver |
| Men's bronze playoff | C.T. Pan (Chinese Taipei) | Beat a seven-man playoff that included Rory McIlroy, who finished tied fourth |
| Women's individual | Nelly Korda (USA) | Home favourite Mone Inami of Japan took silver in a playoff |
For the host nation, Mone Inami's women's silver was the golf medal of the Games, a lift for a country that has long invested more in its women's professional tour than almost anywhere else. And for one visiting star, Kasumigaseki became the scene of a painful near miss, which brings us to Rory.
The Zozo And The PGA Tour In Japan
In October 2019 the PGA Tour played its first official tournament in Japan, the Zozo Championship, at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club in Chiba near Tokyo. The debut could hardly have been scripted better: Tiger Woods won it for his 82nd PGA Tour title, tying Sam Snead's all-time record, with Rory McIlroy finishing in a tie for third.
The 2020 edition was moved to California because of the pandemic and won by Patrick Cantlay, but the tournament returned to Narashino in 2021, where home favourite Hideki Matsuyama won in front of his own crowd, the year after he became the first Japanese man to win the Masters. Now titled the Baycurrent Classic, it remains the marquee week of the golfing year in Japan and the clearest sign that the world's biggest tour takes the Japanese market seriously.
The Great Japanese Players
Japan has produced world-class golfers for half a century, and the modern generation is as strong as any.
- Hideki MatsuyamaThe biggest name in the men's game and the first Japanese man to win a men's major, taking the 2021 Masters. A multiple PGA Tour winner and the standard-bearer for Japanese golf worldwide.
- Isao AokiThe pioneer. The first Japanese player to win on the PGA Tour, at the 1983 Hawaiian Open, and famously the man who traded blows with Jack Nicklaus down the stretch of the 1980 US Open at Baltusrol.
- Jumbo Ozaki and Ryo IshikawaOzaki dominated the domestic tour for decades and became a national institution, while the teenage prodigy Ishikawa, the Bashful Prince, drew enormous galleries and carried the game to a younger audience.
- Hisako HiguchiJapan's first major champion in either gender, winning the 1977 LPGA Championship and blazing a trail that the country's powerful women's tour still follows.
- The modern women's waveHinako Shibuno won the 2019 Women's British Open as the Smiling Cinderella, Yuka Saso has won the US Women's Open twice, and Nasa Hataoka and others keep Japan among the deepest golfing nations in the women's game.
That women's strength is no accident. The JLPGA, founded in 1968, is one of the richest women's tours in the world, with television coverage, corporate sponsorship and prize money that in Japan rival the men's domestic circuit, a level of parity almost unheard of in professional sport.
McIlroy And Japan
Rory McIlroy has no Japanese trophy, but Japan has given him two of the more memorable weeks of his career, and one genuine heartbreak.
- Tokyo 2020 Olympics: At Kasumigaseki in 2021 McIlroy finished tied fourth and lost a seven-man playoff for the bronze medal to C.T. Pan. Having skipped the Rio Games in 2016, he had come to care deeply about an Olympic medal, and admitted afterwards how much the near miss stung. It remains the closest he has come to the podium.
- 2019 Zozo Championship: McIlroy finished in a tie for third at Narashino in the PGA Tour's first Japanese event, the week Tiger Woods won his record-tying 82nd title. A strong showing on an unfamiliar course in a country where he had rarely played.
- The links connection: Japan's rare seaside courses, like Oarai, echo the firm, wind-blown links golf on which McIlroy grew up in Northern Ireland. It is a reminder that the game he learned beside Royal County Down travels, and that the country with the second-most courses on earth still has corners that would feel like home.
For more on the man himself see Rory's Swing and Back-to-Back Masters; for the wider bucket-list picture see our Golf Travel Guide 2026, the guided tour of the St Andrews Old Course and the value round-up in Best Golf Courses Under $100; and for the Japanese pro scene in the tour landscape see Japan Golf Tour and Asian Golf.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many golf courses does Japan have?
Roughly 2,300 to 2,400, the second-highest total of any country after the United States. They range from ultra-private members' clubs through resort and hotel courses to thousands of accessible public tracks. Golf boomed as a corporate status symbol in the 1980s and broadened into a mainstream pastime after the asset bubble burst, so a visitor today can book a good course without needing a member to sponsor them.
What is the best golf course in Japan?
Hirono Golf Club at Miki in Hyogo, near Kobe, is almost universally rated the finest in Japan and one of the best in Asia. Designed by Charles Hugh Alison and opened in June 1932, it is often called the Pine Valley of Japan. The Fuji Course at Kawana and Naruo Golf Club are its usual rivals near the top of the national rankings.
Why are deep bunkers in Japan called Alison bunkers?
The English architect Charles Hugh Alison visited Japan in the winter of 1930 to 1931 and shaped four important courses: Tokyo Golf Club, Hirono, Naruo and Kasumigaseki. His deep, steep-faced bunkers were so new and so influential that Japanese golfers began calling any penal bunker an Alison bunker, rendered as Arison bankaa, a term still in everyday use nearly a century later.
Where were the Tokyo Olympic golf events played?
On the East Course at Kasumigaseki Country Club in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, at the Tokyo 2020 Games held in 2021. The 1929 course, revised by Tom and Logan Fazio, saw Xander Schauffele win the men's gold and Nelly Korda the women's gold, with Japan's Mone Inami taking women's silver in a playoff.
Can visitors and foreigners play golf in Japan?
Yes. A few of the most prestigious clubs still require a member's introduction, but the great majority of courses welcome visitors and many can be booked online in English through resort and tee-time services. A round is an all-day outing with a caddie or self-play cart, a compulsory halfway lunch, and often a hot-spring bath at the end. Neat dress and good etiquette are expected.
Why is there a lunch break in the middle of a round in Japan?
Almost all Japanese courses build a lunch break of 45 minutes to an hour into every round, taken in the clubhouse after the ninth hole. It is a fixed part of the culture, and the tee sheet is scheduled around it. Golf is treated as a full-day social occasion, and the sit-down halfway meal is one of the things regular players value most.
What is the Zozo Championship?
Now titled the Baycurrent Classic, it is the PGA Tour's official tournament in Japan, first played in October 2019 at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club near Tokyo. Tiger Woods won the inaugural edition for his record-tying 82nd Tour title, with Rory McIlroy tied third. After a 2020 detour to California, it returned to Narashino in 2021, where Hideki Matsuyama won at home.
Who are the most famous Japanese golfers?
Hideki Matsuyama, the first Japanese man to win a men's major at the 2021 Masters, leads the modern game. Isao Aoki was the first Japanese winner on the PGA Tour and a 1980 US Open runner-up, while Jumbo Ozaki and Ryo Ishikawa were domestic icons. In the women's game, Hisako Higuchi won the 1977 LPGA Championship, and Hinako Shibuno, Yuka Saso and Nasa Hataoka lead a strong modern wave.
Has Rory McIlroy played golf in Japan?
Yes. His best-known Japanese week was a near miss: at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, played in 2021 at Kasumigaseki, he finished tied fourth and lost a seven-man playoff for the bronze medal to C.T. Pan. He had earlier finished tied third at the 2019 Zozo Championship at Narashino, the week Tiger Woods won his 82nd Tour title.
What makes Japanese golf culture unique?
The multi-tier city driving ranges with automatic tees, the compulsory lunch between the nines, the traditionally female caddies, and the onsen hot-spring bath that ends many rounds. Etiquette and tidiness are prized, and the women's professional game is unusually prominent, with the JLPGA, founded in 1968, among the richest women's tours in the world.
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