In one of the villages through which we passed we observed what appeared to be a family bathing-room. The baths at the time were full of persons of both sexes, old and young, apparently of three or four generations, and all were perfectly naked. This was a curious exhibition to a foreigner, but the reader must remember we are now in Japan. Bathing-houses or rooms, both public and private, are found in all parts of the Japanese empire—in the midst of crowded cities, or, as we here see, in country villages. The bath is one of the institutions of the country; it is as indispensable to a Japanese as tea is to a Chinaman. In the afternoon, in the evening, and up to a late hour at night, the bath is in full operation. Those who can afford it have baths in their own houses for the use of themselves and their families; the poorer classes, for a very small sum, can enjoy themselves at the public baths. After coming in from a long journey, or when tired with the labours of the day, the Japanese consider a bath to be particularly refreshing and enjoyable; and it is probably on this account, as well as for cleanliness, that it is so universally employed. The stern moralist of Western countries will no doubt condemn the system of promiscuous bathing, as it is contrary to all his ideas of decency; on the other hand, there are those who tell us that the custom only shows simplicity and innocence such as that which existed in the Garden of Eden before the fall of man. All I can say is, that it is the custom of the country to bathe in this way, and that, if appealed to on the subject, the Japanese would probably tell us that many of the customs amongst ourselves—such, for example, as our mode of dressing and dancing—are much more likely to lead to immorality than bathing, and are not so useful nor so healthy; at any rate, the practice cannot be attributed to habits of primitive innocence in this case, as no people in the world are more licentious in their behaviour than the Japanese.
Yedo and Peking (1863)
Although every house has its tub, the towns abound in public baths, where, for a trifle, a more luxurious scrubbing can be had. And these public places are an institution of the country quite as remarkable as any other. There is a door marked “for men,” and one “for women;” but this distinction ends after crossing the threshold, for, on entering, men, women, and children are seen scrubbing each other, enjoying cold and hot douches, and making a perfect babel of the room with their loud chattering and laughter.
This custom, shocking as it seems to an European, appears to be perfectly compatible with Japanese ideas of modesty and propriety, and a Japanese lady of undoubted virtue finds nothing wrong in the practice. I shall long remember an incident which convinced me of the truth of this statement. During my stay at one of the mines on Yesso, where there is a hot spring, I went one evening with one of the officers of our staff to take a bath. The small spring-house had an outer room for servants and miners, and an inner compartment for the officers and their families; but this division was only above the water, which ran from the spring into a box about three feet deep and eight feet long. As we entered the inner compartment we found the wife of the chief officer bathing with her children. Before I had time to withdraw, the lady came out; and, politely offering us the bath, remarked, that as there would not be room for all of us, she would go with the children to the other compartment. The whole thing was done so gracefully, and without the slightest embarrassment on her part, that I began to wonder from what direction would come the next shock to preconceived ideas of propriety. Honi soit qui mal y pense is perhaps as applicable in a Japanese public bath as in the galleries of sculpture of the Vatican.
Across America and Asia (1870)
The weather clears during the night, and early next morning we are off on foot for Ashinoyu, a village higher up among the hills, and known chiefly for its strong sulphur waters. A walk of three miles, all up hill, and affording fine views of the surrounding mountains, brings us to this small Harrogate of Japan; and, indeed, were one taken there blindfolded, and set down in the little open space which surrounds the covered baths, one could hardly help guessing oneself to be in the Yorkshire Spa-room, for there is the identical odour, as of rotten eggs, equally strong in the two. The baths are filled directly from natural springs, and are very hot, the thermometer standing in them at 109º. Several natives go through their bathing as we rest for an hour in the verandah of a tea-house: they seem to come to the waters chiefly for rheumatic complaints and general debility.
Round the World in 1870 (1872)
The Japanese use very hot water for their baths; we could not endure such heat. They have no soap, but depend entirely upon the hot water to make them clean. They are a very cleanly people in this respect, using the bath often. Yet the fact that many bathe in the same water no doubt may account for much of the cutaneous disease so prevalent.
The Sunrise Kingdom (1879)
Not a day passes, summer or winter, it is said, that a Japanese does not bathe once at least, and in warm weather twice a day is a common rule.
We can but admire such evidence of cleanliness, and set it down greatly to the credit of these children of the Rising Sun, as they sometimes style themselves. It seasons our admiration somewhat, however, to know that the same water may be made to serve for a whole family—father, mother, children, and servants, in the order named; and that in many of the public baths, as at Tokio, though bathers come by scores, the water is changed but once a day. The Japanese, till recently, had no such thing as soap. An alkali is added to the water for washing clothes, and in the bath the body is rubbed with little bags of meal.
From Japan to Granada (1889)
The natives are scrupulously clean, and have their public baths on the main streets, where the vats are sunk in the floor, and the bathers indulge in a long soak and a social visit, after they have spluttered and splashed and soaped from the little wooden wash-tubs which hold perhaps a gallon. As the doors slide back in their grooves, these community baths are often open to the view of the passer, and many an Adam and Eve, sans bathing-suits, are seen floundering like seals in a tank.
Because this nude simplicity was known to shock the foreigner, the emperor demanded that the sexes should bathe separately, and hence one often sees a bamboo rod stretched across the bath-house floor, forming the line of demarcation. Thus the fiat is obeyed, and the separation of the sexes is maintained.
A Woman Alone in the Heart of Japan (1906)
The one amusement in Japan which everybody enjoys, rich and poor alike, is bathing. When ill, when tired, when gay, when sociable, whenever in fact they can, Our Little Brown Allies pack their carpet-bags, blow up their air cushions, and start off for some hot spring or another. The rich travel by train, the poor walk, sometimes for many days, with their wives and babies after them, till they get to some little mountain village with bubbling hot springs that will boil themselves and their eggs at the same time.
A typical bathing resort has a sulphurous atmosphere and one street, generally steep. On wet or wintry days this is dreary beyond words, for all the houses look as if they were built of cardboard and only meant—as indeed is the case—to be used in summer and sunshine. But in the season, July or August, everything looks delightfully picturesque. Then all the tea-houses are gay with lanterns, and all the public bath-houses resound with merry splashings. Like the Casinos of European “Spas” these public tubs in Japan are social centres. The poor may use them for motives of economy, but the rich use them for the sake of companionship. A well-to-do Japanese does not see why his worldly goods should force him, as it were, into a privacy he does not appreciate. Our dog-in-the-manger policy about bathing does not appeal to him in the least. To shut oneself up in a little room, forcibly keep one’s friends out, then jump into a tub, very probably filled with cold water, scrub oneself painfully with a brush or a rubber sponge, jump out again in two minutes, rub furiously and feel tingly for an hour, where is the pleasure in that? He much prefers to saunter with an acquaintance down to a big sunken tank into which the delicious hot water runs through a bamboo pipe, sit on the edge for a few moments enjoying a last cigarette or cooling with a plank the particular corner he fancies, and finally slowly and luxuriously slip in. Meanwhile he can chat with any acquaintances who may have begun to boil before him, or with any passers-by who, looking through the slats of the window, recognise a neighbour and stop to pass the time of day. A comical scene often ensues when the bather and his acquaintance bow to one another. The outsider can, of course, put in his usual graceful flourishes, but the insider is at a disadvantage; he is almost sure to look like a porpoise about to dive, and if he is not very careful his polite inquiries after the health of his friend appear only as air bubbles on the surface of the water.
Behind the Screens (1910)
I met in my hotel some friends from Hong Kong. They had taken a few weeks’ holiday in Japan, had been busy making excursions through the beautiful country, and were now grumbling at the Japanese custom of over-hot baths, which had made their feet soft and unfit for the time for further excursions.
Japan As I Saw It (1912)
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