In the communal bathroom there is a rectangular wooden or tile tub about twelve feet long, ten feet wide, and three feet deep, which can accommodate from ten to twenty persons at one time. The tub is brimming with hot water, which is usually so exceptionally hot—over 110 degrees Fahrenheit in many cases—that no Westerner with fairer skin would be able to stand it. The prospective bather first washes his body thoroughly with hot water, provided in taps along the walls of the bathroom proper, before he steps into the tub, for he does not dare to pollute the water. My countrymen are most fond of a really hot bath; they immerse their bodies in the deep tub so long that they come out colored as red as lobsters! They then set to rubbing their entire bodies with soap and hand-towels or sponges, all the while helping themselves liberally to warm tap water provided from the outlets along the wall. The floor is spacious enough so that twenty to thirty people can easily squat on it to scrub their bodies and wash their hair. All these washings are carried on outside the tub.
The public bathhouse is most crowded in the evening when most people have finished their day's work; perhaps fifty to one hundred people may be taking a bath at the same time. I should say that while my countrymen display considerable shyness in exposing their bodies in public, in the bathhouse they shake off their diffidence entirely and turn the whole bathhouse into a kind of nudist club! I have said that the communal bathhouse is separated into two sections for segregation of the sexes. This segregation is complete with only one exception: in the bathhouse for a few extra yen one can hire a sansuke, a husky young man to scrub your back. Quite a few bathers ask for the service of this professional man, for he not only scrubs your body but also kneads the muscles of your neck and arms in the bargain. It is certainly pleasing to have one's body massaged by this youthful masseur. Unlike other bathers he appears for his duties with a type of swimming trunks on. Now this male sansuke also performs the same service for nude female bathers in the women's section. Strangely enough, there are no female sansuke in any part of the country.
The Japanese do not share the American's liking for a shower bath. They seldom used it before the Occupation, nor do they particularly like it now. Their idea of a bath is not confined to cleaning the body, for their conception goes beyond this basic operation. They soak their bodies thoroughly in the deep bath and enjoy the pleasant feeling which overheating the entire body gives. To most of my countrymen a shower bath is unsatisfactory in that it does not provide the same enjoyment that is obtained by deep immersion in the tub. A friend of mine, a Japanese, after intensive house-hunting in San Francisco some years ago, finally found a very attractive house for rent. The bathroom, however, contained only a shower, so my friend gave up the house, a very desirable one in every other respect, simply for lack of a bathtub.
The communal bathhouse in Japan has been a time-honored institution for many centuries. On an average, one thousand people a day visit one bathhouse. It naturally serves as a meeting place for the people in the neighborhood. Since my countrymen bathe quite often—some almost every day— they meet their neighbors and friends in the public bath and exchange greetings and gossip. In the large tub in which perhaps more than a dozen persons are enjoying soaking themselves at the same time, some people take advantage of the opportunity to advertise certain stores, boost certain political candidates, or worse still, spread communist propaganda. All these touts feign a casual tone of voice, so that their remarks may be believed by the other bathers.
The Japanese passion for hot baths can be explained by economic and physical reasons. The Japanese house has no heating arrangement in winter, save perhaps for a meager charcoal fire in a small brazier, which is kept barely alive and just hot enough to boil the water of a tiny tea kettle. Most of my countrymen are so poor that they cannot afford even a modest coal or gas stove, let alone a central heating system. As a result, the Japanese may be said to be half-frozen in winter. American officials during the Occupation were often surprised to find Japanese hands icy cold, when they shook hands with visitors arriving in the well-heated American offices in winter time. It is true that some of our office buildings and trains are now moderately heated, but you may count upon our houses being invariably cold. Under such physical conditions, a hot bath naturally provides a very desirable internal heating system for us. By a stay in a really hot bath for quite some time, our bodies remain warm for many hours afterward in chilly rooms, even in ones completely devoid of heat.
A further reason for this communal bath institution is economic. There is a tremendous saving in water and fuel when a thousand people can use the same hot water in a comparatively small tub, instead of everyone taking an individual bath at home.
This discussion of Japanese public bathhouses reminds me of a visit I made to a Soviet bathhouse when I was in Moscow several years ago. I was on the embassy staff there during the war years. I was very curious about many things the Russians did, for example, their not using paper at all after relieving themselves! I found that most Russians, like my countrymen, frequented a public-bath establishment, which was government-owned. My curiosity was aroused and I decided one day to visit a near-by bathhouse, defying the vigilant eyes of the secret police agents who always trailed me, sometimes secretively and at other times straightforwardly. After standing in a long queue, I entered the bathhouse, and upon payment of a few rubles at the counter, I was given a tiny cake of soap, which was about the same size as the free cake of soap given in American hotels. The interior of the bathhouse, both the anteroom in which you undress and the bathroom itself, bore striking resemblances to Japanese public baths. The bathroom, however, was devoid of a tub; instead, the whole bathroom was filled with warm steam vapor. There were the familiar rows of hot and cold water taps along the wall, as in a Japanese public bath. However, the total effect was like that of a Turkish bath. The way the Russians scrubbed their bodies squatting on the tiled floor was pretty much the same as in Japan. Both the Russian and the Japanese people are extremely poor, judged by American standards, and in order to economize both in fuel and water, they too must fall back on the public-bath arrangement.
Another reason for using such hot water for bathing is medical. The Japanese consume a great deal of salt in the form of shoyu, a soybean sauce, salted fish, and pickles. In fact, one of the characteristics of our cuisine is its almost complete lack of sweets. We are inveterate drinkers of unsweetened green tea—at home, in offices, and on trains. Most offices employ young girls whose only task is to make and serve tea to the office staff and to customers and visitors. Now this almost continuous tea-drinking habit is born of necessity. We have to drink copious amounts of tea in order to counteract the effects of the excessive salt we eat. I myself try to subsist on Western food, having been used to it for so long and not being particularly partial to shoyu or rice. However, once in a while I have to eat a complete Japanese meal, and then I become very thirsty and keep on drinking water for hours afterward. Many of my countrymen complain about American food being too sweet. I knew one Japanese admiral in prewar years who, while journeying on the American continent, always carried with him a bottle of soybean sauce and sprinkled it on whatever food was served to him in restaurants. Hot baths with their attendant perspiration serve as a natural antidote against too much salt in the body.
Oddly enough, my countrymen take equally hot baths in summer, for then the weather is not only very hot but also extremely sultry. A hot bath is thought to produce a reaction of cooling immediately after the bath. So there is a national indulgence in boiling hot baths all year round.
Not all Japanese go to a communal bath. The well-to-do have their own bathrooms in their homes. Here the bath is usually a wooden affair, but in some homes it is constructed of marble or tille. Members of a family immerse themselves in the same hot water in the tub, but they soap and scrub their bodies outside the tub, just as do the patrons of the public bath.
Hotspring baths are found almost everywhere in my country. There are actually more than 1,100 mineral baths, of which 656 are thermal