Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:44p.m.
At one time an essential communal ritual, many of these baths are now facing closure.
Known in Japanese as sento, Japan’s public baths have been around for almost 500 years, with their popularity peaking during the late ‘60s. Inside, the spaces can range from clinical to rustically dirty, with baths coated in mineral deposits and wooden lockers falling off their hinges.
The typical sento contains separate sections for men and woman, about two dozen showers (which you sit down to use), a mural of Mt. Fuji, and a couple of baths, graduating from ice-cream cold to Anton LaVey hot.
The non-typical sento however may contain a nice fake “outdoor” area, a zen garden, complete with coy or turtles, a milk vending machine and maybe even a denkiburo or “electric shock bath” if you happen to be especially unlucky.
But the attractiveness of sento is also intangible; it is the chatter of old men discussing the horses and business. It is a nostalgic, unadorned, and frail Japan. A temporary zone where concerns about what is “improper” slide down the plughole and the topography of social status is levelled through the “skinship” of naked bathing.
I resisted bathing naked with old Japanese men for a long time. It has nothing to do with being ageist specifically, but I do feel uncomfortable about conversing with the elderly while I am unadorned.
Finally coaxed into entering a bath in Nishi-Ogikubo thanks to a visiting Argentinian friend promising untold relaxation (and cultural enlightenment) I took my clothes off in front of old men and coy alike, and after the bath felt untoldly [sic] relaxed (and culturally enlightened).
I was shocked to hear that this old space had closed this month, and subsequently found that sento closures are rising all over Tokyo.
Tokyo, in the throes of reckless progress, is casting aside the traditionally local sento in favour of multistoried “health lands” and “super sento”. Many of these new spaces, like the Oedo Onsen Monogatari, are garish exaggerations of their former selves. Visitors to the Oedo baths dress up in traditional garb and buy food from a Disneylandish simulation of a 1930’s food hall, in between crowded bathing in a variety of 'faux', 'pseudo' and 'plastic' environments. But the steamy ghost of ‘60s sento still lives in Tokyo if you look hard enough.
Looking hard I found Shimizu-Yu, a decrepit public bath five minutes away from the world’s busiest intersection.
The baths are housed in what looks like a temple on the verge of collapse, with a towering smoke stack extending upwards. The clientele matched the texture of the bathhouse perfectly: wrinkled, eccentric, listless.
Run by the Ito family since the ‘20s the baths are among the oldest family run baths in Tokyo. Graciously the Ito’s let me in early one morning to take photos. Humiliatingly they also put me in the money collectors chair and forced me to yell “Irrashaimase”; those welcoming words foreigners mistake for abuse when they enter a Japanese shop or restaurant.
Apparently I was not loud enough, and the ordeal went on at least four times before I had reached optimal volume.
Even if that wet noose does hang Tokyo’s public baths, it just makes those few remaining pockets of indifference and resistance all the more powerful examples of Japan’s simple and resonant communal rituals.
Cameron’s Shimizu Yu photos: