Japan's Public Baths Are Incredibly Healthy for Society. And It's Also Really Healthy That Everyone Is Naked.

Japanese culture is, er, complicated. But they get one thing really, really right.

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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I was nervous the first time I visited a public bath in Japan. It was partly the required nudity. The bathing areas are separated by gender, and big signs declare — in English, because Japanese people already know this — that swimsuits are absolutely not allowed.

But I was also intimidated by the ritual. Public bathing is a whole “thing” in Japan, with very specific rules — like the nudity requirement — and a very clear list of dos and don’ts.

I’d read a couple of guides and watched a video or two, but I was still worried I would screw something up and look like an idiot.

Photo by hyun kim on Unsplash

But the man at the front desk took one look at me — obviously not Japanese — and briefly outlined what I should do. And then, when I entered the locker room, a patron immediately pointed to the basket where I should store my clothes, and the mini-lockers where I could lock my valuables.

Before I entered the bath itself, I found myself in an area with seated stations where I knew I was supposed to thoroughly wash my body.

And once again, a patron smiled and nodded me to one of the stations.

As I’ve traveled the world as a digital nomad these last nine years, I’ve found that the vast majority of people are incredibly generous and welcoming, especially outside of tourist areas. To get locals mad at you, you really have to act like an entitled jerk.

And this is especially true of the Japanese.

Anyway, the washing station is a little area with a stool and a shower nozzle, and a counter with various soaps, and a bucket and scoop that, even now, I’m still not exactly sure how to use. I pour water over myself, right? But why not just use the shower nozzle? And why am I sitting? In fact, why the hell am I not just taking a thorough shower?

The greater point is, you don’t bathe when you’re out in the public bath — you relax.

Once I’d washed, I found myself out in that bathing area, carefully sinking into the steaming waters — surprisingly hot, much warmer than your typical jacuzzi. And it really was relaxing. This particular bath looked out into a lovely little Japanese garden.

Photo by Roméo A. on Unsplash

I was struck by how incredibly healthy this whole experience seemed — for a culture to have this kind of ritualized relaxation.

I thought the same thing when I visited the hammams of Turkey, the thermal baths of Budapest, and the saunas of Scandinavia.

Japan has both public baths and “onsens,” which are baths specifically fed by naturally hot water from geothermal springs. In an onsen, you generally don’t shower afterward, to give the minerals from the bath a chance to absorb into your skin.

And public baths and onsens are everywhere, even in hotels.

But they’re completely different from “day spas” in America. For one thing, Japanese baths are affordable. In hotels, they’re even complimentary. They’re not an “occasional splurge” — or yet another way for the rest of us to bow down and serve the rich.

No, they’re a regular part of daily life for almost everyone in Japan. And while it’s partly about “self-care,” it’s also about being a member of the greater community.

That means it’s partly about respect for others: you’re never supposed to let your hair or towel touch the water in the bath, and you should tidy up your own washing station for the next person.

(Also, anyone with a tattoo anywhere on their body is barred from entry or asked to leave, because tattoos are associated with organized crime here — but this sounds more prejudicial than respectful to me.)

Photo by Momo Kim on Unsplash

I think the nudity is another really healthy aspect of the whole experience — just as in the hammams of Turkey, the thermal baths of Budapest, and the saunas of Scandinavia.

During my first visit to that Japanese bath, the open nudity was a bit shocking — for about five minutes. Then it became completely normal, even as I also couldn’t help but take in the incredible variety of the human form, all shapes and sizes, young and old.

People talk about “normalizing” different body types. But come on — the only real way to do this is to, er, be around other normal bodies.

My introduction to public nudity was in high school. I came of age in the era when we were, yes, required to take group showers after P.E. classes.

“There’s no way you’re going back to class smelling like that,” the coach would say. “You all stink!”

And he was right: we did all stink. But those open showers were still fairly terrifying. Like everyone, I was concerned about how my own body looked, how I measured up. But as a gay boy, I was also worried about how my body might react to the sight of the other naked boys.

But even now, I don’t think any of this was “trauma” or “abuse” — and I don’t think it was sexual either, at least not in the minds of any of the adults I encountered.

I still think it’s a reasonable idea: that it’s normal for guys to be naked together, and also that teenage boys should get really intense exercise every day but shouldn’t go back to class stinking to high heaven.

I just wish everyone hadn’t been so virulently anti-gay — both the other kids and the coaches. The consequences of being revealed as gay were just too high.

Unfortunately, I think America’s current “nudity” paradigm is somehow even worse than what I had to put up with — and that’s taking into account the vicious anti-gay bigotry of that era.

It’s been decades since young people have been made to take showers together — the logical result of America’s never-ending shame and hysteria over sex, coupled with modern-day helicopter parenting.

Now Americans are virtually never naked together, and the only other bodies young people ever see are the perfect — and perfectly unnatural — bodies in highly sexualized (and omnipresent) online porn.

It’s hard to put into words how unbelievably screwed up I think this is.

And while I’m revisiting the past, when did America latch on to this crazy-stupid idea that the way to deal with things that make us uncomfortable is to avoid them?

This is something called “avoidance,” which psychologists have long considered to be one of the most mentally unhealthy things a person can do.

Avoidance doesn’t reduce anxiety, except very briefly in the short term. On the contrary, it ends up massively increasing anxiety because people never learn the coping mechanisms that we all need to regulate uncomfortable emotions.

This is literally Psychology 101, and it’s yet another area where I’m baffled by how America got so off-track.

All this talk about America is raising my blood pressure.

It doesn’t help that, even here in Japan, public baths are slowly dying out. Newer houses, apartments, and hotel rooms now include their own “private” bathing areas.

Photo by Nguyen TP Hai on Unsplash

Frankly, this is the kind of development Michael and I have seen all over the world, even outside of America: people are retreating from their own communities. In the UK, pubs are disappearing. Everywhere else, people are using cafes and coffee shops for work, not socializing.

Real-world interactions are being replaced by cyber worlds that give us exactly what we want but not what we need — connections to a community we can truly rely on and a genuine sense of belonging.

Who knows? Maybe in some way that I still don’t understand, this is progress.

But it doesn’t feel like progress. These changes in the air feel as wrong to me as the warm waters in all these baths and onsens feel so incredibly right.

In the meantime, well, I am still in Japan, and there’s a public bath just down the street. Maybe I’ll go there to relax.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book, below.

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