Covid has accelerated a decline, but a new generation of public toilets reinvents a Japanese tradition
It is a Japanese ritual that dates back centuries: undressing with friends and neighbors before the lie in the restorative waters of a public bath.
But nearly a millennium after the opening of the first sento in Tokyo, Japan’s trendy public toilets face an existential risk, and are retaliating by redefining the organization of the toilets.
At its peak in the late 1960s, there were only about 18,000 public toilets in Japan, according to a national sento association, adding 2,800 in Tokyo alone. Nationally, the figure has fallen to less than 2,000, adding around 400 in the capital.
The economic good fortune of post-war Japan gave working-class families the means to buy new homes where they could simply do their ablutions in the privacy of their own bathrooms. family business circle, while many locals are enveloped by rampant remodeling.
The symbol of a sento as a depressed shelter for older men has long deterred younger customers, while the Covid-19 pandemic and emerging fuel costs have only added to the sense that the culture of hadaka no tsukiai (naked friendship) may be just one day. become a cultural relic.
But a small, growing organization of owners is causing the sento to cool again, attracting other people who may never have experienced the undeniable thrill of soaking in hot water in front of the backdrop of a lovingly painted Mount Fuji mural.
The new generation of sentō is much more than a shower and a bathroom. The offer of craft beers after the bath and pizzas brewed on site, musical occasions that deserve the impressive acoustics of the public baths, early morning hours for other people who need to swim before work, saunas, classic chocolates and games for children, and loan of e-books for only a few hundred yen a month.
“We saw other people coming to a public restroom for the first time,” said Sam Holden, an American who co-founded Sento in 2020.
Inari-yu now attracts several hundred people a day, a combination of veterans and other young people, who in combination provide enough income to stay afloat.
“There are a lot of other seniors in this neighborhood, so we didn’t need to change the name of the sento, but make it welcoming to regulars and newcomers,” said Holden, who has visited about two hundred sento since he first became known as a sento. graduate student in Tokyo. Here you meet a total component of the population: men and women, young and old, foreigners and other people from other backgrounds.
“They are a position to anchor you in the city. When you walk into a public restroom, you’re keeping up with the people. . . there’s a nice feeling about it.
After the coronavirus pandemic hastened the disappearance of even more public toilets, those who survived now face sky-high fuel prices, forcing the Tokyo government to increase entry for adults from 20 to 500 yen (£3. 08) in July.
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The many demanding situations discouraged Sanjiro Minato, who gave up his “boring” task as a worker and took control of the Ume-yu Public Baths in Kyoto in 2015.
“I enjoyed going to sit when I was a school student and was embarrassed by the fact that they were in decline,” said Minato, who has attracted new consumers with concerts and flea markets, and promotes Ume-yu on Twitter, where he has more than 16,000 followers.
When Minato took over the sento, most of his clients were elderly; now more than one part is between 20 and 30 years old. “The challenge was that young people didn’t perceive what sento was, but social media helped replace that. “
Shinobu Machida, Japan’s leading sento expert, admits that sento will continue to close, but believes the renovated public baths will last longer as their clientele undergo sophisticated demographic change.
“Other young people are increasingly interested in sento, and new owners are looking for a new technique to keep them on board,” said Machida, who has written several books on Japanese public toilets.
“Westerners don’t think of a bath the same way the Japanese do,” added Machida, who has visited 3,800 public toilets in the past 40 years. “They are functional, but in Japan, a bathroom has another similar vital role, that of relaxing mentally and physically. Bathing in a sento can be a non-secular experience.