Bathing people are usually not allowed to carry anything into the water, so people often put towels on their heads.
Japanese men and women in hot springs
Text丨Wang Lu
Photography丨Mark Edward Harris / Institute Picture Club
This article was first published in the 863rd issue of "China News Weekly"
The temptation to completely take off clothes has always been there for humans, and the Japanese have taken it to the extreme through bathing.
"Although the door of Japan is open, it still maintains its own tone inside. Outsiders cannot get close to you or understand. Only hot springs can tolerate everyone." said Mark Edward Harris, a photographer who photographed a series of Japanese bathing culture . However, as we deepen our understanding, Westerners will gradually realize that they are still a little naive.
In 1948, Japan issued the "Hot Springs Law", which stipulates that "the warm water, mineral water, water vapor and other gases (excluding natural gas) that emerge from the ground, any temperature at the source of the hot spring exceeds 25 degrees, or contains a certain amount of hot spring substances, can be called a hot spring." For Japan, which has a small and mountainous land area, the natural gift of hot springs has made the irrational side of the Japanese national character firmly wrapped in the shell of rationality. At first glance, there is something incredible.
1853, Perry led a gunboat to knock on Japan's national gate, but was shocked by the way of bathing in confusion between men and women. In the report sent back to the country, he wrote: "The lower class of Japanese people are mostly moral than other Eastern citizens, but they are indeed very lewd."
was troubled by the same problem. When the US Consul General Harris was in office, he also asked the local shogunate officials, "Do anything." Why do citizens who are meticulous in love do such a hurtful thing? "The answer he got is this - "It is precisely because of this exposure that the desire accumulated due to mystery and difficulty in venting to a certain extent."
in 游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游游� There, you can get a precious experience that blends with nature.
The responses of Japanese officials must have been racking their brains and trying hard to think. For more than a thousand years, the Japanese have been immersed in the baptism of bathing culture and have long disapproved of the trivial matter of mixed bathing. The theory of lust is mostly an indulgence to Western moral standards.
Dazai Osamu In the novel, a girl sandwiched between two old couples with "nobody's feeling" in the public bathhouse is described as "like a pearl attached to a dirty shell and protected by the black shell... The tall and tight body reminds people of the green peach." In the face of complete honesty, lust is also washed away clear and transparent.
In fact, when the government prohibits mixed bathing according to Western moral standards, a group of "bloody" Japanese people jumped out to argue. Yukio Mishima once said angrily: "All things that seem boring in Westerners are abolished, and all things that seem ignorant, weird, ugly, and immoral in Westerners are abolished. This is civilized and civilizedism. From the perspective of Westerners, the wave song is low-level, the special attack team is stupid, the savage section is barbaric, and the Shinto is ignorant and simple. If all these things are denied, what is left in Japan? Nothing is left."
For the Japanese, the importance of bathing with whom is far less than that of bathing itself, because bathing carries the responsibility of soul purification.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Shiting Sanma said in "Fushi Fenglu" which reflects the customs and customs of Japan at that time, "In the world, bathing is the best shortcut to education. Whether you are a noble person or a commoner, everyone is naked when you bathe. Just like when you are born, this naked communication makes people forget the high and low status, and sublimate to a Buddha's realm without desires and desires."
In fact, bathing culture evolved from religious rituals. In the mid-8th century, many Buddhist scriptures flowed into Japan with Tang envoys and monks. One of them was written by the Greenhouse Sutra to persuade people to accumulate merit through bathing.This method is not unrelated to the "典易" advocated by ancient Chinese aristocrats. This ritual originating from the palace, bathing and cleaning the body and mind with clear water has evolved into a folk custom of "moving water". Many ascetic monks will choose to stand by the stream and purify their body and mind with the cold rivers, waterfalls, and water of the sea.
However, this asceticism has changed its temperature when it comes to Japan. Japan has 270 volcanoes (80 of which are active volcanoes), accounting for 10% of the world's total volcanoes, and is an important part of the Pacific Rim Volcano Seismic Belt on the largest volcanic seismic belt on the surface of the earth. Above the "stove" is an unpredictable disaster, and it also contains unexpected tenderness. The clear mountain springs have been heated into a natural gentle place.
This makes the bathing ceremony warmly embrace everyone as soon as it appears, and the dramatic words such as rebirth in the fire of fire are also given a lingering and ambiguous imagination. No wonder Kusatsu, a hot spring town where the indigenous Ainu people of Japan, is a famous saying: hot spring bath can cure anything except love.
By stepping on the pin presser, you can stimulate the acupoints and play the role of foot massage.
Since then, under the leadership of monks and other role models, believers have flocked to the temple to accumulate virtue and remove defilements by bathing. The temples in the Peaceful Age have nurtured the earliest public bathhouse - "money soup". Until today, many monks from temples still have to get up early in the morning to collect pine branches and heat a thick-walled clay "fire box" on the stone floor to provide the most authentic services to believers who come to bathe. People believe that "soup bathing can eliminate seven diseases and bring about seven blessings", especially in temples.
No matter what era, hot springs are silently healing the body and mind of the Japanese.
In the Edo era, the main function of bathing hot springs is to cure diseases, which is the so-called "decoction treatment". Akita Hetang Hot Spring is the first "Soup Treatment Site". Hetang was originally called Tianze Tang, but because hunters found that a crane had been cured in water, they changed its name to "Hetang". There is a Chinese monument in Otama Town, at the western end of Tokyo, in the hot spring shrine, and a similar story was told in detail to show authority.
inscription is written like this, "Therefore, it is said that there was a black crane that had wounded arrows and fell to the ground. It went to the place where the hot springs in the rock cliffs were boiling, extending their necks and slipping. The one who stayed for two days, the flesh was getting heavier and arrows were pulled out, and then it soared into the sky. The people inside began to describe the divine liquid here, and opened its secrets, so it was called He Tang."
Hot springs can cure diseases, so they are called "Shen Tang". For a long time, they were limited to the enjoyment of aristocrats and privileged classes. However, this kind of resource that is not scarce is difficult to form a monopoly, which instead accelerates the flow of the common people.
In the late Edo period, travel with the purpose of faith or tangzhi began to prevail among the common people. Because the government has strict control over population mobility, ordinary people can only get the opportunity to go out by visiting shrines, which has become a popular "false reason" for a while. Because hot springs are relatively close to temples, they naturally become a must-see destination for relaxation and leisure.
Take the Edo-sential peasant group visiting Ise Shrine as an example: when you go there, you have to stay overnight at Hakone Yumoto Hot Spring, then go to Dogo Hot Spring in Shikoku. After returning to Kyoto, you have to visit Seongkyu Temple , and then stay at Ikasato Hot Spring.
and so on. During the slack farming period and before and after going to sea, farmers will perform soup treatment for several weeks, using natural power to eliminate the fatigue of their muscles and bones. This method of hot spring treatment was later called "one tour per week". After Tokugawa Ieyasu unified the world, he went to Atami hot spring treatment in Shizuoka Prefecture , and followed the tradition of one week as a cycle.
Inoue Kiyoshi once said in "Japanese History": "Since the ancient emperor system formed a dependence, there have been cases of defining some people into untouchables in any era." This situation was not reversed until 1871. This year, the Meiji government announced that it would divide the people into four categories: royal family, Chinese, gentry, and civilians. It was not until after World War II that the new constitution implemented the rights of "untouchables", and their travel restrictions were finally abolished and they had the right to vote. In order to avoid discrimination, they were also called "tribal people". However, in front of the hot springs, the boundaries of such privileges seemed to have long blurred.
In the second half of the 19th century, a large number of Westerners flocked to Japan, and at the same time brought Western medical and scientific research methods. German Belz conducted a field survey on famous hot springs in various parts of Japan and published "Theory of Japanese Mineral Springs". In 1886, the Meiji government conducted a more systematic investigation based on this and published the "Japanese Mineral Springs Chronicle". Although no one can understand the data analysis, the behavior of data analysis itself proves the efficacy of hot springs.
Hot springs give Japanese people an indiscriminate healing. Whether in the mid-to-late 20th century when economic takeoff or in the 1980s when rapid growth came to an end, hot springs can always be properly expressed in the lives of the people.
As a "comfort travel" for employee welfare was popular in the 1950s. Japanese entertainment experts described it as follows: "The Japanese entertainment is roughly gathering at work units first, then taking the train to travel to hot springs. When you arrive at the hot springs, you can take a bath first, and after drinking a few glasses, you may slap a few mahjong." Under the social trend of "mass production and large consumption", hot springs eliminate people's surplus ambitions.
In the 1980s, Japanese citizens began to return to a plain life. The trend of only work is the value gradually weakened. The government also accepted the accusations against "worker bees" from abroad and began to increase statutory rest days. Among the female group, "secret soup fever" appears, namely a hidden and quiet hot spring, especially an open-air hot spring in the wild.
In the first month of 1984, Yuko Tsushima, the daughter of Osamu Osamu, returned from a trip to Izu and wrote: "I think it's not just me. It's hard for anyone to have the opportunity to openly see others, especially the nudes of the opposite sex. Once a year, it's great to see men who take off their clothes in the sense of rethinking people." With the praise of TV stations and women's magazines, open-air hot springs have absolute popularity and have continued to this day. Since the 1990s, the call for returning to tradition and contact with nature has become increasingly high. In the introduction to Yubuyuan Hot Spring, which is firmly ranked among the top three hot spring awards every year, you can often see descriptions such as "quiet basin", "as if time has stopped passing", "the refreshing and fresh air unique to the plateau", "the scattered art gallery" and other descriptions.
For hundreds of years, the Japanese have finally returned to the pastoral and pastoral life described in the earliest document "Izumo Kingdom Customs" that records hot springs: "There is a hot spring gushing out by the river, which is a beautiful place where you can overlook the mountains and seas. ... The look of taking a bath once becomes beautiful, and all diseases are cured twice. Since ancient times, this effect has never failed. Therefore, people call it "God's Soup."
, including hot springs, there are three bathing forms in Japan, and the other two are family bathing pools and mass bathing pools.
No matter what kind of bathing form it is, the importance of cleaning is minimal for the Japanese. If cleaning the dirt on the body's surface by showering in Europe and the United States is considered a "rinse culture", then Japanese bathing can be called a "soaking culture" suitable for meditation.
is located in Hyotan Hot Springs in Kyushu, Japan. The pattern of hot springs is similar to the meditation of the early monks by the stream when they are ascetic.
The "wa" and "silence" in Japanese culture also correspond to the cultural connotation behind bathing. "wa" means cleanliness and silence, while "silence" means simple beauty permeated from the inside. Such beauty is often irrelevant to wealth and status.
standard bathing process requires people to wash their bodies before entering the bath. Towels and various types of detergents should not be mixed into the bath. If you enter the bathtub with a towel because of being shy, you will be criticized by strangers who bathe together. Xu Guangping In the book "Memorial of Reassuring", he recalled the embarrassing incident when Lu Xun was studying at shentai in the 20s. When Lu Xun was studying at shentai , he accidentally fell into the hot spring bathing together: Lu Xun covered his lower body, squatted in a mess in the hot spring, and did not dare to stand. Some Japanese girls came to criticize him with their butts naked and criticized him for his feudalism.
Standard cleaning supplies before soaking.
For most Japanese people, bathhouse memories are both collective memories and social places to escape reality. Here, people can have "uncovered interactions" with great pleasure.The smell of dry towels, the steaming steam, the "click" sound of clogs calls for friends' dependence. Without any social background, hierarchy or status discrimination, it is completely a relationship between "people" and "people", which attracts people to return to the bathhouse again and again.
In an era when people's hearts are distant, the bathhouse has become the only existence that makes people worry about, whether with others or with themselves. In Japan, even the smallest apartment can find a deep bathtub enough for an adult male to sit in and soak in meditation. If it is a family, the order of bathing is usually adult men, children, and adult women. Every family member will use a plastic cover to cover the bathtub after taking a shower to save heat for the next person until everyone has finished bathing, including guests staying at home, the water will not be poured out. The savvy Japanese calculated that the whole family could save 7,100 yen by taking a bath with a tank of water; and using bath water to wash clothes, water flowers, and flush the toilet can save 4,200 yen.
Japanese psychologists interpret soaking culture as a human instinct. They believe that humans are born with the desire to return to their mother's fetus. Sucking in the bathtub is like soaking in amniotic fluid in the mother's belly, with a sense of security and peace of mind. Therefore, after taking a bath, I feel free from fatigue and feel very happy.
and scientific research confirms this. Bathing can promote the secretion of hormones in the body. When you first enter the bath pool, the sympathetic nerves have the advantage. People's blood pressure rises, their heartbeats accelerate, and their blood sugar will also rise. Afterwards, in order to correct this "abnormal" state, the parasympathetic nerve gradually gained the advantage, blood pressure began to decline, pulse fell, and blood sugar decreased. With the alternation of the two, the human body gradually returns to balance, and the body and mind gain a sense of relief and relaxation. This is the source of happiness.
This kind of happiness has become a unique aesthetic imagination in the writings of Japanese writers.
The first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature Kawabata Yasunari once admitted: "Immersed in hot springs are happier than anything else for me. I want to spend my life in hot springs." He also fulfilled his ideals. In Kawabata Yasunari's novel, hot springs follow like shadows. " Izu's Dancer " tells the innocent story of a preparatory student who had a hot spring girl while traveling in Izu. The story is written in Izu's Tenchongyama Yushima Hot Spring, which describes the Yuno Hot Spring in Kawazu Town.
Even Haruki Murakami, who loves Western culture, regards the pleasure brought by hot springs as the highest life experience. He said: "If readers can feel the deep warmth of a hot spring bath from my works, it would be really joyful."
Since many years ago, Japanese people have realized that the continuous flow of wealth is pouring out of the hot springs.
The government has invested in the construction of hot spring towns and natural trails leading to hot springs in various places. The traditional hot springs themselves also attach more importance to coordination with nature. The architectural layout, historical culture, scenic spots and historical sites, and even mountaineering, skiing, traditional craft experience are integrated into it, making the hot springs a kind of pride that is difficult to refuse.
According to statistics on hot spring resources and utilization status by the Ministry of Environment in Japan in 2014, there are 27,405 hot spring sources nationwide, and nearly 130 million Japanese citizens visiting hot spring hotels every year, equivalent to the total population of Japan.
are not limited to humans, but Japanese snow monkeys also often bathe in hot springs. In Ueno Prefecture, you can often see monkeys who soak in hot springs all day long, and they are as obsessed as humans.
No matter where you come from or what you encounter, you can easily stroll on the streets of the hot spring town. The clothes and worries will be taken off, and you will change into a light bathrobe. If it is winter, you should wear a little jacket called "half-wrapped". The magic of water continues to ferment in the senses, and the warm current that nourishes the body and mind may be derived from nature and the deepest love.
Duty Editor: Yu Yang
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