A traditional Japanese public bath is nothing fancy. It is not an onsen with extraordinary water properties and skin benefits and it does not normally have stunning colours that you might find in nature. Yet there is something extraordinary about Japanese public baths, pools filled with hot water to soak in. It is not easy to explain what a Japanese public bath is, but let’s start from the basics. The Japanese word is “Sentō”, pronounced like Italian “I feel”. The characters are “銭湯”, respectively “coin” and “hot water”. So judging from its word origin a Sentō is a place where you pay the entry fee using a coin and you take a bath in hot water. This was the custom during an extended period of Japanese history, when people did not have a shower at home. Still nowadays a Japanese coin of 500 yen is normally enough to access most public baths. Nowadays most public baths have two different sections for men and women, and you must be naked.
A Japanese sentō teaches you so much about Japanese culture. Before even reaching the cashier or the vending machine to purchase the entry ticket, you must take your shoes off and place them in some normally wooden locks. You never need your own lock as they always have a wooden piece with a number inscribed. You simply take it off and put it into your bag. In some cases someone will collect it at the cashier and return it to you once you are done. Next you enter the area where you take your clothes off and put them in lockers that will also have a key with a bracelet you can bring with you into the water. Everyone is gets naked without worries of being seen or judged by others, whether they are with their colleagues, friends or family.
Once you locked your clothes behind, it is time to go through the sliding door that takes you into the bathing area. There, you will find some buckets, traditionally wooden buckets to form a pyramid one on top of another. You take one and wash your body and hair before going into the bathtub. Some people shave, others brush their hair, while others brush their teeth intensely. The buckets of Japanese public houses have been used in literature to prompt laughter but also to invite reflection about the human nature. If fact if you look at traditional buckets placed one on top of the other, still present in some bathhouses nowadays, you will see that the shape that they form resembles the one of the Japanese character “晶” (Shō) or crystal. A popular public bath author of the Edo period, Santō Kyōden, wrote that the character 晶 represents three small buckets piled on top of each other. This
character itself means brightness or light. In the same way, as people every day enter
the bath to wash their bodies, they cleanse their souls and hearts, washing away the filth
of wrongful desires and evil passions. Thus, one’s pure heart is left shining bright and
clear. The character shō 晶 is therefore associated with the idea that bathhouse guests make use of the
bathhouse space to remove their “evil passions” and “filth” to exit with not only a cleansed body
but also a cleansed heart.
After having washed yourself, you can proceed to the bathing area. In the olden days there was another door between the washing area and the bathtub to prevent the heat from dispersing. It was a glass door normally cleaned using pomegranate juice, one of the reasons why it was referred to as “zakuroguchi” or “pomegranate door”. In the bathing area it is forbidden to soak your towel into the water, although you could keep it onto your head. Now it is time to relax, leave the worries of the day drift away and allow your mind to be free.
Japanese bathhouses are something extraordinary, historical and an unbeatable cultural experience.
