As I stretch out in my ‘gilded’ birdcage like a preening Papageno, high up in the tree canopy of a pristine forest, above a holy river, at Hoshinoya Bali resort, I bathe luxuriously in the forest, its sights, its sounds and smells. The mantra ‘nature is medicine’ soporifically reverberates in my drifting mind. If ‘nature is medicine’, I think to myself, then here in this remarkable place, I may soon wilfully overdose on it.

That mantra is central to the Japanese nature therapy Shinrin-Yoku, or ‘Forest Bathing’. It was the unlikely bureaucrats of the Forest Agency of Japan that coined this beautifully lyrical phrase in the 80s, for a practice extolling the healing benefits of taking mindful forest walks. Since then Japanese and Korean scientists have gathered compelling evidence of reductions in stress, anxiety, depression and sleeplessness, as well as boosts to immune systems.

Unsurprisingly therefore, ‘forest bathing’ has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine. And in our hyper stressful world – the message is spreading like wildfire.

Of course the paradoxical danger in commodifying forests as a sugar-coated pill for all life’s ills, is that the inevitable human invasion will degrade or destroy those very assets.

Bali is one such place where over-tourism has led – within a short time-frame – to pollution, congestion, rapid and expansive urbanisation, and a consequential loss of open spaces, wildlife habitats and rice paddies that support the local population, and represent its beautiful heritage. All it takes is something as banal as Julia Roberts starring in Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 travel memoir Eat Pray Love, and soon exponential armies of determined monetising Instagramers provoke a money-fuelled chemical reaction, that no one has the will to contain.

It wasn’t too long before everything radically changed. Time appeared to rewind as we joyfully traversed picturesque bucolic scenes of bygone Bali. Villages of grace and charm, picture-book terraced rice paddy fields, magnificent forests. The pace slowed, the air cleared and the nightmare was over. Even our jaded taxi driver, who was evidently as new to this area as we were, seemed dazzled by its exceptional beauty. This was the paradisiacal setting of Hoshinoya Bali.

Forests are certainly something that leading Japanese hotel management company Hoshino Resorts knows something about, having been founded in 1904 by Kuniji Hoshino as a forestry business in the Japanese Alps.

Hoshinoya Bali is the brand’s first resort outside Japan, and was soon followed by a second in Taiwan (a hot-spring resort that opened in June, 2019). This rapidly expanding luxury hospitality brand now has 8 traditional Japanese inn-style resorts or ryokan around Japan (and operates many more).

Every type of resort experience is catered for from city, mountain, river or sea-side settings, including digital detoxing at a luxury glamping resort to Japan’s first ever Agriturismo Resort.

Now led by the American-educated fourth generation family heir Yoshiharu Hoshino, there is nevertheless nothing American nor Western in the brand’s approach. On the contrary, what has distinguished this brand under his leadership is a distinctly innovative vision, coupled with supreme pragmatism and confidence.

At first Yoshiharu Hoshino bravely stripped the board of family sinecures, ensuring a meritocratic future for his company. Mindful of the marginalisation of Japanese traditions and culture – not least in the increasingly Westernised hospitality sector – he then reimagined a more confident Japan, stripped of excessive Westernisation.

There’s no underestimating the radical vision behind this move. Hitherto the norm accepted by the global tourism market has been a hospitality paradigm that was either wholly Western or Western/local fusion. The domestic Japanese market had also accepted that norm: they had become accustomed to larger rooms, tables and chairs and more comfortable futons.

So that’s exactly what Yoshiharu Hoshino provided – but within a rigorously Japanese context, often finding existing properties and refurbishing them in traditional style with modern design elements. Remarkably, the experiment began with the closure and comprehensive overhaul of Hoshino Resorts’ original property of Hoshino Onsen. 10 years later in 2005 the resort reopened as Hoshinoya Karuizawa and the new pioneering concept of luxury ryokan was born.

When he hit upon the idea – at least in the hospitality context – that ‘modern’ need no longer be equivalent to ‘Western’, he revolutionised the industry in Japan. Since then, many have successfully jumped onto the bandwagon, but the brand remains ahead of the curve. Hoshino Resorts are the Japanese market leader in all the main themes that distinguish cutting edge resorts internationally: the first green resort; first agriturismo resort; one of the first multi-lingual resorts; first glamping resort.

Maintaining a focus on ecological issues, local culture and local organic produce, Hoshino Resorts’ maxim could well be ‘think global, act local’. But make no mistake, the filter is a distinctly Japanese one.

It isn’t a difficult leap to fuse Balinese and Japanese cultural principles as there is much that unites them. At the heart of Balinese Hinduism is the 2,000 year old idea of “Tri Hita Karana” (or ‘three causes of well-being’), that is identified as harmony with God, with people and with nature. Similarly living in harmony with nature and nature worship is at the heart of Japanese Shinto; hardly surprising as vast expanses of the Japanese archipelago are swathed in mountains and forest.

The Balinese-Japanese fusion is everywhere at Hoshinoya Bali, in the delectable cuisine of its restaurant and café, the exceptional spa and its treatments in the midst of the forest. And it’s also immediately obvious as soon as you walk through the gate of your villa, into the minimal zen garden with its the alang-alang or sacred grass-roofed bale pavilion – much like a Japanese gazebo – overlooking the long canal pool. It’s also there in the design of the three different villa options, with their elegant shoji screen doors, minimal decor and comfortable futons on raised platforms.

But dominating everything and underlining a sense of place, is the exquisite Balinese craftsmanship of the carved wooden wall panels within villas, and the carved stone panels on the terraces – all atmospherically rear-lit. The harmonious scenes depicting humans, gods, flora and fauna of these vast sculptures subtly make reference to both Balinese Hindu and Shinto philosophies of harmonious balance. Consistently, there is also harmony in the intelligent interior design: pleasingly balancing the horror vacui of these densely carved sculptures with the Japanese minimalism of the villas.

Hoshinoya Bali’s 30 villas are laid out like a Balinese village along three canal pools, fringed with a restrained palette of lush and verdant banks.

Elegant pool-side terraces lead down into a small semi-private pool area, partially screened from prying eyes. But should you be in a convivial mood, you can venture out along the canal to meet your fellow ‘villagers’ as they bathe in the pool, or relax in the decidedly grand public viewing terrace at the head of each pool.

Curiously the canal pools are – at a consistent 1.1m depth – rather shallow by Western standards, and are perhaps more suited to a brisk aquatic resistance walk, than an energetic swim. This may well reflect very specific Japanese traditions, experience and preferences. Traditional Japanese onsen (hot spring) pools tend to be shallow – and swimming is completely taboo.

But it was a tragic accident in 1955 that dramatically shaped the Japanese attitude to pools and swimming. 168 people – most of them children who did not know how to swim – drowned when the Siun-maru collided with another ferry in thick fog. This terrible incident triggered a determined drive to build pools and teach swimming in all schools.

However a well-intentioned, but ultimately counterproductive drive to keep children safe by building shallow pools, meant that many didn’t really learn to swim adequately. Consequently Japan still has the highest rates of drowning in OECD countries.

Putting aside the paradox of an island nation’s discomfort with swimming (one that is oddly shared with the Balinese), water is of course a key feature of traditional Japanese gardens, and along with its forest setting, is a dominant theme at Hoshinoya Bali. In fact the pool design mirrors the sacred Subak irrigation canals, that picturesquely run through the property with their cooling sounds, and which are crisscrossed by terraced walkways.

And here we have the explanation for why the environment in which Hoshinoya Bali sits is so exceptionally pristine. The resort is located within a magnificent 19,500 ha UNESCO World Heritage site – the first such designation in Bali. The exceptional importance of the site is that it was here, by the Pakerisan river, that the ingenious Subak irrigation system for rice paddy fields first began in the 9th century, before spreading throughout Bali. This system relied on smallholding farmers working cooperatively and ritualistically, under the overall authority of priests. Water tapped from a single source flowed through temples, via a complex network of pulsed canals and weirs, to irrigate the semi-aquatic rice plant on its many terraces in artificial ecosystems.

The interconnected components of religion, farmer, and the natural and artificial environment of canals, rice paddy terraces and the forest (that protects the water supply), is perhaps the best example of the “Tri Hita Karana” philosophy of harmonious balance in action.

The beautiful philosophy they produced – that powerfully resonates in our modern world – has shaped the landscape of Bali. It has enabled the Balinese to become the most prolific rice growers in the archipelago – at least until the modern age and the arrival of mass tourism.

Perhaps you – like me – may ponder on the majesty of these religious, cultural and environmental components; the toil, ingenuity and thousands of years of heritage that surround you and which have somehow led to this very moment, when you – thousands of miles from home – languidly raise with your chopsticks a few grains of rice, whilst stretched out, high up in a birdcage, the sound of the canals in your ears, the forest sublimely bathing your mind.

Staying at Hoshinoya Bali means stepping out of your comfort zone; and stepping into an alternative parallel comfort zone – that you hadn’t even imagined existed.