Japanese Bathing Customs

NUDITY IS NATURAL TO THE JAPANS By Hugh Moreton, Tokyo

One of the outstanding traits of the Japanese people is the habit of taking hot baths. Particularly in taking extremely hot baths the Japanese have no equals. The custom is quite unique. Whilst a subsidiary reason may be the Japanese scrupulous devotion to cleanliness, the chief reason is the protection and preservation of health. Japan is very humid (sometimes registering 80 to 90 per cent humidity) and has several Tsuyu (rain seasons). When all is saturated with moisture, the dampness numbs the spirit of the people, dulls the digestive organgs, and brings on depression and irritability. It is then the Japanese feel the urge to take a hot bath. In the Summer when there is a rainy season and in the Winter when Japanese homes are ill-heated from a Western point of view and the temperature falls much below freezing point for four months of the Winter, hot baths are popular. They sweat in order to cure colds!

Almost every household has its own bath tub, but in cities and towns there are numerous public bath houses. The public bath house is a social institution where neighbours enjoy friendly gossip daily while bathing!

There is such fondness for bathing in Japan that many people don't feel right unless they have had a morning and evening bath! It is fondness that has popularized the hot-spring resorts of Japan. Japan being volcanic is well endowed with mineral hot springs. No country is better endowed than Japan with natural hot springs. Some of the spas are situated in remote parts of the country where old customs and quaint manners still persist; others are tourist resorts, provided with all the amenities of modern travel. At some resorts both sea bathing and mineral spring baths can be enjoyed; at others on the mountainsides city grime and heat can be avoided.

There are more than 1,100 mineral springs of recognized medicinal value in Japan. Most springs are situated in a region of magnificent scenery and with awe-inspiring thermal activity. There are geysers spouting 10 feet high, boiling mud pools, and sulpher fume jets. In Beppu (a southern island resort) one can enjoy sea bathing, lie in the hot sand on the sea shore, or in a steam bath! The temperature of these hotsprings ranges from 80 F. to 226 F. at the source.

The simple thermals contain few chemical ingredients and are extremely benefical for muscular and articular rheumatism, chronic eczema and nervous disorders like hysteria and nervous debility. There are also the carbon dioxide springs used both externally an internally. They assist digestion and are beneficial for anemia. Then there are common salt springs where the sodium chloride pre-dominates and these are beneficial for gout, rheumatism, malnutrion. There are also muriated springs with a trace of bromine in the water: these with bitter springs are valuable for the treatment of skin diseases, besides chronic rheumatism, neuralgia and nervous disorders. Iron carbonate springs containing small quantities of ferrous ions are chaise for internal treatment, supplying the requisite iron to the blood. There are also vitriolic springs and sulpher springs. The latter are beneficial for sufferers from gout, neuralgia, syphilis, lumbago and diseases of the respiratory organs, chronic metallic poisoning. Last of all there are radio active springs good for respiratory diseases.

Nedless to say bathing is always in complete nudity. The Japanese are so delightfully ingenuous and artless and natural in all this as a people, that mixed bathing is the order of the day for public baths, private baths (where the baths were large enough to accommodate the family), and hot springs. In hot springs and private baths this is of course still the order of the day. However in the public baths (scores of them in every city) there are mostly partitions although for both sections there are women attendants who as part of the service will scrub the patrons including the men. Only when Japanese mingled with Western people (who often appeared embarrassed or prudish) were slight modifications made out of courtesy to the guests (foreigners).

The naive attitude of Japanese people stems from the sense of family intimacy. Children who are accustomed to seeing their parents take gyozui (tub-bathing) out of doors in the Summer, and who themselves participate, think nothing of it when they grow up. This bath is taken just when the evening air becomes cool, and many office workers and factory labourers look forward to their gyozui on alighting from trams, busses, trains. The children take their water pistols or toys into the tub with them and it is difficult to force them out!

This same family structure extends naturally to hotels. In cities where Western influence and contacts are at a minimum. and in practically every hotel in every city which has Japanese cuisine and sleeping facilities (quilts on straw mats instead of Western style beds), the Japanese style bath is found. This is a large tiled bath (not dissimilar to hot spring baths illustrated in the article) for the patrons and staff of the hotel. The Japanese stands outside the actual pool or sits on a wooden stool with wooden pails he can dip into the pool or which he can fill up by faucets. Here he soaps himself and scrub off the dirt and when he is thoroughly clean he immerses himself in the pool which remains clean and clear. He can sit in the pool with the water up to his neck! If the pool water is very hot he may just dip in for two minutes and come out again for a while and then return. Japanese men do their shaving generally before soaking themselves — as they wash (without the troublesome clothes!) He undresses in an anteroom and places his clothes in a cupboard (as in Western swimming pools), and then he takes in a wash cloth and soap with him to the bath.

During the course of business I frequently have to stop in a hotel — and I invariably choose a Japanese style hotel in preference to the Western style one. (Some hotels have a combination of Western and Japanese with respective facilities and slightly different rates). The normal experience is to take a bath at the end of the day before bed, and sometimes to have one first thing in the morning before breakfast. If one takes a bath at 9 or 10 in the evening one is likely to find some of the hotel guests (sometimes with their children) and possibly a couple of the hotel maids taking a bath simultaneously. To act surprised would be to give an impression of immodesty. One does not normally talk to others unless one is introduced or the other bathers are known, just as one would do in a train. Japanese do not usually use large drying towels like Western people. The wash cloth (which is generally about two feet long by inches and is not coarse or thick) is used (when wet and dried out) to dry one! This is done before leaving the bath room. In many baths there is a maid attendant who will scrub backs as part of the service! In Tokyo the other day I had trouble with my car and was all dirty. I had business appointment shortly. The simplest thing was to go to the main Tokyo railway station and take a bath (public). The bath has a capacity for perhaps say a 100 to bathe at the same time. There were two or three maids who did nothing but scrub backs, going from customer to customer! Within 20 minutes I was at my appointment clean and fresh!

In our private home we have a bath (tiled) with a capacity for 4 adults to it in the bath simultaneously. We never think anything of it to take our daily bath together as a family. My wife and three children (girls and boy) accompany me and we can finish our bath together in 20 minutes easily! We all relax together and chat and it is a miniature mixed public bath house! The day's gossip in discussed and dismissed!

I think the atmosphere of Japanese bathing must the nearest equivalent we have in the East for the Finnish Sauna baths except that we have no birching! We have expert massage facilities in Japan an the nimble fingers of the masseuse must be our counterpart!

I think most Japanese people practice some form of naturism but don't know they do, it is so natural! However there is no such thing as an organized naturist society to my knowledge in Japan. I wish there were, and that I could invite the INF to this beautiful country for a convention at one of the paradisiacal spa!