Vacationers, Honeymooners, Lovers & Fugitives Flock to Hot Springs

TOKYO – Hot springs have played a vital role in the history of Japan, not only for their contribution to the Japanese obsession with cleanliness and their medicinal benefits, but also as popular venues for planning political intrigues and strategies, for vacationers seeking release from the stresses of daily life, for honeymooners and lovers seeking the anonymity of their secluded locations and the lustration effects of hot baths…even miscreants who have committed some crime and find solace in soaking in hot mineral water.

Japanese novelists and filmmakers have long used the special attraction of hot springs, onsen (own-sen) in Japanese, as the locale for their stories.

Hot springs are, in fact, one of Japan’s most important cultural and economic assets, on a par with the country’s arts and crafts, industrial technology and many manufacturing industries.

Some years ago the U.S. Geological Survey did a worldwide survey of hot springs and mineral springs and found that Japan led the world in the number of onsen. According to the U.S.GS report, France has 124 hot springs, Italy 149, the United States 1,003, and Japan 2,237.

Fudoki (fuu-doh-kee), the ancient regional chronicles of Japan, note that prehistoric emperors were devotees of hot spring bathing, and that Buddhist priests traveled to the far reaches of the country promoting the efficacy of hot spring bathing and encouraging their commercial development because bathing daily was an integral part of Buddhist purification rituals.

Japan’s creation myths attribute the number of hot springs in Japan to two gods of medicine (Okuninushi and Sukunahikona) who caused the springs to gush forth from the bowels of the Earth for the benefit of the people...and these two divine beings are enshrined at many onsen around the country.

Dogo Hot Springs, in what is now Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku Island, is believed to have been the first onsen developed as a spa in Japan, and is said to be where some legendary emperors, (prior to 300 A.D.) did their bathing.

In earlier times, in addition to their daily baths at home and in public bathhouses, all classes of Japanese engaged in special ritualistic bathing at hot springs several times a year. These events included a New Year’s Bath, Mid-Winter Bath, Spring Bath Cure, Bon Festival Bath, Pre-Harvest Bath, Post-Harvest Bath, Autumn Bath Cure and Winter Bath Cure.

Interestingly, the water at all of Japan’s hot springs is not naturally hot. According to Japanese law, a hot spring must have a specified amount of minerals and other ingredients to be designated a hot spring, but mineralized water that comes out of the ground at 25 degrees centigrade (77 degrees F.) warrants being defined as a hot spring.

One of the hottest hot springs in Japan is Kusatsu Onsen, where the water is a steady 48 degrees C. (118 degrees F.), which is so hot that bathers are limited to three minutes at a time. The onsen attracts visitors from all over Japan who go there for the therapeutic benefits resulting from repeated immersions in the water. A regular “course” consists of four 3-minute immersions per day.

Kusatsu Onsen is in Gumma Prefecture about 90 minutes north of Tokyo. It has been in use since the 1100s.

Foreign visitors who would like to experience the ambience and benefits of Japan’s onsen might want to keep in mind that there are several different types of baths at different resort spas.

Among them: hohmatsuyoku (hoh-maht-sue-yoe-kuu), a bath that is filled with air bubbles to massage the body; utaseyu (uu-tah-say-yuu), in which the water falls from a height onto the bather’s body (like standing under a waterfall); rotenburo (roh-tane-buu-roh), which are outside open air baths, mushiburo (muu-she-buu-roh), like a sauna; zabonburo (zah-bone-buu-roh), which is a bath in which a special kind of oranges have been squished; and sunamushiyu (suu-nah-muu-she-yuu) or a hot, wet sand bath.

And as previously mentioned, many of Japan’s most popular hot spring spas are popular because they feature mixed-sex bathing. That beats basting in hot sand any day.

Copyright © 2007 by Boye Lafayette De Mente
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Boye Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan, Korea, China and Mexico since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on these countries, including the first books ever on the Japanese way of doing business: Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business , first published in 1959, and How to Do Business in Japan, published in 1961.

To see a complete list of his titles [each one linked to Amazon.com’s buy page], go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.