I was listening to a podcast on the history of Japan (hence all the questions about Japanese history recently) and there was a brief discussion about a Japanologist staying at a ryokan in Kyoto. The very old inn advertised itself as having been in the family for over a thousand years, but the old woman who ran the business confessed to the professor that there was a slight lie in their story, that actually the ryokan wasn't truly the original thousand-year-old ryokan, and had burned down during the Onin War.
This got me to thinking, what kind of people patronized ryokan in pre-modern times? Hotels are usually things I think of as more modern 20th Century creations, with the growth of GDP, tourism as an industry, and modern lifestyles. I'm familiar with guest houses that catered to pilgrims in Medieval Europe (Chaucer's magnum opus begins in one of them, for example) but I'm curious as to what kind of clientele a ryokan at the time of the Onin War, or basically any time before TripAdvisor or AirBnB.
TLDR: For the Edo Period,it was basically samurais who were mooching in inns.Oh and merchants. God,so many merchants.
I hafta say that I lack the wherewithal to read ancient Japanese texts during the Heian and Kamakura periods which describe the patrons that went over to the fuseya or its Kamakura variant,the Kichin-yado (distant ancestors of the ryokan) so my answer will focus primarily on Edo Period patrons. As an educated guess,however,I'd probably go with my gut in that the primary Heian-Kamakura patrons would be
We don't really see this type of clientele change drastically during the Edo Period,but we do see the numbers grow exponentially,primarily cuz of several reasons I'll illustrate below.
The Edo Period saw the rise of the Tokugawa bakufu and,consequently, the rise of Edo from a provincial capital to the national one. Edo quickly grew in size and commercial importance with the Sanka Manroku (三暇謾録 ) census having a 26 million population for all of Japan in 1721,disregarding the samurai and the nobility,with Edo having,probably,nearly a million inhabitants. Unique to the Edo period was the practice of Sankin-kotai ( 参勤交代 ),essentially a way to keep the daimyōs in check by holding either them or their family hostage in Edo at alternate times. (If you stayed in Edo,your family lived in your fief and vice-versa). Edo was a hub which saw the constant arrival of new nobility,their retainers and their retainers' families. While daimyōs would have official residences in Edo Castle,specifically the nishinomaru (Western Gate) sector,the castle proved inadequate for housing all their retainers at once and low-ranking hatamoto were expected to find their own accommodations.
More importantly,the samurai already in Edo did not stay in Edo Castle,despite them being part of the bureaucracy of the shogunate. The Edo hatamoto,their wives, and the majority of the household retainers of the daimyō who do not live on their lands (chigyasho) often had a "hotel existence" in which they found themselves permanently stationed in different inns. This was especially prominent in Early Edo,where housing could not match the speed at which Edo grew,but this developmental issue was not resolved even uptill 1868,due to the constant expansion of Edo all throughout the Edo period. This hot demand for accommodation was exacerbated due to the of influx of common people from the fiefs who were artisans or merchants,or peddlers (botefuri) , construction laborers,even idlers (yūmin) who constantly streamed into Edo and took up accommodation spots, with the numbers only increasing from year to year. This sparked the birth of what is the modern ryokan within Edo,but (back then) known as hatago (旅籠), in which boarding houses would both offer a meal and a room for the night (The previous Kichin-yado only offered the firewood to cook your own meals). The hatago and Kichin-yado were the two dominant forms of inn in Edo,catering to different classes of wealth among the populace and hatagos were,actually,most of the time,"fully booked" due to it being the primary residence of Edo samurai rather than inhabited by tourists.
The 2nd primary clientele were,as you might've guessed, merchants and chonin (wealthy peasants),people who had to travel because of their work rather than for political reasons. Edo had grown to rival Osaka and Kobe as the economic center of Japan and foot traffic subsequently exploded to reflect the rising status of Edo. Merchants had taken the mantle of the rice trade in Edo Japan and were constantly shipping and transporting rice from rice-rich Chugoku to rice-poor Tohoku and Edo was smack in the middle of this trade. There was,however,a catch; Merchants were low on the totem-pole in Edo Japan,a social strata informally termed as mibunsei (身分制) and were unable to stay in the same inns as the samurai or the nobility and necessitated special hatagos that catered specifically to non-samurais.
As for the roadside inns,the Bakufu,in an attempt to both facilitate travel,communication and centralization,built several highways,most prominently the Nakasendo Highway with dozens of rest stops and,very soon,roadside inns began to spring up all over the highway,offering boarding and respite for long journeys through the highway and there were a ton of categories. There was the Honjin (本陣 ) in which only court nobles, district lords, and hatamoto (direct retainers of the Shogun) were allowed to stay overnight stay and the Waki Honjin (脇本陣) when retainers could not afford to pay for the "premium Honjin treatment". Only (poor) Samurai,court nobles and federal officials were allowed to stay at the waki honjin.Over time,the inns began to get amenities,such as Tonyaba (問屋場) which were stations in which horses were stationed to handle cargo for upper- class traveler. In short,a type of inn for nearly every type of traveler !
I hope this gives a brief overview of the types of inns and their patrons in the Edo Period. It's a little humorous to imagine that "hotels/inns" as we know em were actually the primary residences of the samurai during the Edo period instead of a tourist location as popularly imagined today,but I guess that's what makes the Edo period so fun to read about;you always find fun anecdotes like this ! Feel free to ask if you have any queries.
PS: I was involved in something work-related and didn't receive the notification for this post till a week later. Hope you see it!
More Sources to read up on:
LM Cullen,A history of Japan,Internal and External Worlds,1582-1941
LM Cullen,Tokugawa Population: The Archival Issues
Walking on the Nakasendo,Kyoto to Edo,by the Nagoya International Center,2012
Merchants and Society in Tokugawa Japan,Charles B Sheldon,1981