Sento (Public Baths)

Sento are public bath houses. Sento derives from Buddhism. In Buddhism bathing is an important rite for Buddhists monks In Nara they built large baths (bib yuya) that still exist at Tōdaiji Temple (built 745) and Hokkeji Temple (b.741). It is called yuya in the Kanto area; furoya in the Kansai area.

There were large public baths in the Heian period (794-1185) for poor aristocrats of Japan’s imperial court (kuge). The rich had their own private baths.

Sento as we know it began in 1591 by Yoichi Iseno in the city of Edo (now Tokyo). After Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa settled in Edo in 1590 to build a city there and became shogun in 1603 As people moved to Edo, the yuyas increased.

Sento in the Edo Period (1600-1867) were steam baths called todana-buro, a kind of sauna and people only soaked the lower half of their bodies. Men and women bathed together. To keep the steam inside a board covering the front of the tub from the ceiling (zakuroguchi) was used. Inside was dark and to enter one had to bend down beneath the board.

By the early 17^th century there were tubs to allow shoulder-deep baths (sure-buro), steam baths (mushi-buro), and more modern systems called teppo-buro which used a big vertical metal cylinder to heat water. Goemon-buro was a large bathtub with an iron bottom heated by fire, named after Goemon Ishikawa, a bandit executed by being boiled alive in Kyoto. In a Goemmon-buro people stepped on a wooden board or wore wooden sandals to prevent being burned.

In Edo, as sento made a good place for socialization, the bathhouses hired yana, female prostitutes, who took care of customers at yukaku (licensed pleasure quarters). Later it was banned.

In the Meiji Period (1868-1912), sento called saisen-onsen or “remodeled spa” appeared which used hot water from a spa city also kairyo-buro (reformed bath). The bathtubs began to be standardized and separate facilities for men and women appeared.

Mt. Fuji is the symbol of sento culture. It originated at Kikai-ya (in Kandaeen racukucho, Tokyo) in 1912. Painter Kosho Kawagoe painted the wall of a sento. Tile is also used as decoration.

There are many different types of baths in various sento. For instance at Hakusan-yu, there are 13 kinds of medicinal herb baths as well as an infrared sauna, jet bath, Jacuzzi, electric bath and a cold bath, and the women’s side also has a jet bath and an open air bath. It also has a sulfurous bath (one of only there in Kyoto). Sento is always more than just a place to get clean but also to unwind, it is said that the negative ions in the water trigger alpha waves generated in the brain that makes one feel relaxed.

A sento can be identified by a colorful noren (traditional fabric dividers) hung outside the entrance to the sento. In 2008, there were about 215 sento in Kyoto.