A bathing ape
Sep. 22nd, 2004 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'm coming to the end of my summer in Japan. I fly back to my real home -- the Karl Marx Allee in Berlin -- on October 1st. Last night I played the last scheduled Momus concert of 2004, an energetic sex-themed cabaret at Osaka's Noon Club. The reason I was so zingy and frisky is that just an hour before taking the stage I'd been soaking in a nearby sento, absorbing the electric current flowing through the water before being rubbed and pneumatically massaged by two different mechanical massage chairs. The culture of bathing has become my obsession this summer; hardly a day has gone by when I haven't tried some new spa, sento, onsen or rotenburo. I really have become a bathing ape.
Actually, at some hot springs you can bathe with wild monkeys. Since there's a possibility that I'll be spending a couple of months in Hokkaido this winter, that's now become my big ambition: to bathe with red-nosed monkeys in a landscape white with snow.
I've been reading up on the history of bathing, and it's amazing how similar ancient Roman baths were to modern Japanese ones. Like the Japanese, the Romans left their clothes in a cupboard. Unlike the Japanese, though, the Romans -- at least the ones stationed at Bath, in Britain -- had a crime problem; cloaks were often stolen. (The Romans had 'curse tablets' which they hung in an outer room of the baths, demanding that thieves and other malefactors have their intestines eaten by wild birds.) Like the Japanese, the Romans washed first, splashing water from ceramic jugs rather than plastic buckets. Like the Japanese, they proceeded from a tepid bath to a hot one and then a cold one, 'to close the pores'. (There was a sign in the sento I went to yesterday saying that if you go from hot to cold water four times, your body is strengthened and you won't feel weak or lightheaded after your bath.) Unlike the Japanese, though, the Romans had slaves to stoke the fires that heated the water, and to scrape them clean with a key-like scraper called a strigil. Like the Japanese, the Romans decorated their baths lavishly with mirrors, statues, tiles and murals. In fact, Roman baths were more like the newer 'supersentos' which are now springing up in Japan, like the one in Odaiba, Tokyo; they were complete culture and leisure centres, with manicure and massage rooms, gyms, places where, according to Bath Council's blurb, 'people could swim, jog, wrestle, or show off their weight-lifting':
'Ball games of all kinds were popular, including games which used heavy medicine balls. The less energetic could play board games; we have ivory, bone and glass gaming counters to prove this, as well as dice made of agate and rock crystal. Some baths also had gardens and a library reading room. A lot of them had snack bars, and in the Caerleon legionary baths archaeologists have found shellfish remnants, mutton chops and chicken bones. Poets recited their work, and hoped for a dinner invitation. The unfortunate Seneca, who had to live above all this activity, was bothered by the noise: ‘...the man who likes to sing in the bath; men who jump into the water with an almighty splash; and then the cries of "Cakes for sale" and "Hot sausages".’
Like the Japanese, the Romans excelled at feelgood ecumenical sleight of hand. Just as a Japanese sento might contain both Shinto and Buddhist references, so the Romans at Bath managed to blend Sulis, the Celtic goddess of the spring, with Minerva, their own 'household goddess' and healer. They made a little shrine to her at the baths, those 'temples of the flesh'.
Temples of the Flesh happens to be the title of a book by Alexia Brue, published by Bloomsbury. Alexia, a rather pretty blonde New Yorker, went round the world on a bathing tour, which sounds like nice work if you can get it. At Takaragawa onsen she tried the mixed sento, emerging naked only to realise that although the bathing was mixed, everybody else was wearing towels.
Well, we all make mistakes. I made one when I said that nobody in medieval Britain took a bath for 500 years. In fact, some castles did have dank rooms you could fill with moat water and bathe in, reaching towards a gargoyle-shaped peg for your scrubbing brush. Me, I'd rather bathe with a troupe of monkeys in a Hokkaido hot spring, looking out at a landscape of snow.
I don't think Britain is going to rediscover public bathing any time soon. The paranoia about, for instance, adults seeing other people's naked children just gets screwed tighter all the time in my beloved no-longer-homeland. The latest dogfight in the battle of the British with their own bodies was reported yesterday in the Education Guardian in a story headlined Complaints Prompt Review of Nude Art. Morley College, a London art school, is trying to decide whether to continue displaying nude drawings and paintings in the public spaces of the college after 'a few people raised a concern over the nature of some of the student artwork displayed at the college'. A decision will be made later this week. I wait with bated breath, on the edge of my sauna seat.
Actually, at some hot springs you can bathe with wild monkeys. Since there's a possibility that I'll be spending a couple of months in Hokkaido this winter, that's now become my big ambition: to bathe with red-nosed monkeys in a landscape white with snow.
I've been reading up on the history of bathing, and it's amazing how similar ancient Roman baths were to modern Japanese ones. Like the Japanese, the Romans left their clothes in a cupboard. Unlike the Japanese, though, the Romans -- at least the ones stationed at Bath, in Britain -- had a crime problem; cloaks were often stolen. (The Romans had 'curse tablets' which they hung in an outer room of the baths, demanding that thieves and other malefactors have their intestines eaten by wild birds.) Like the Japanese, the Romans washed first, splashing water from ceramic jugs rather than plastic buckets. Like the Japanese, they proceeded from a tepid bath to a hot one and then a cold one, 'to close the pores'. (There was a sign in the sento I went to yesterday saying that if you go from hot to cold water four times, your body is strengthened and you won't feel weak or lightheaded after your bath.) Unlike the Japanese, though, the Romans had slaves to stoke the fires that heated the water, and to scrape them clean with a key-like scraper called a strigil. Like the Japanese, the Romans decorated their baths lavishly with mirrors, statues, tiles and murals. In fact, Roman baths were more like the newer 'supersentos' which are now springing up in Japan, like the one in Odaiba, Tokyo; they were complete culture and leisure centres, with manicure and massage rooms, gyms, places where, according to Bath Council's blurb, 'people could swim, jog, wrestle, or show off their weight-lifting':
'Ball games of all kinds were popular, including games which used heavy medicine balls. The less energetic could play board games; we have ivory, bone and glass gaming counters to prove this, as well as dice made of agate and rock crystal. Some baths also had gardens and a library reading room. A lot of them had snack bars, and in the Caerleon legionary baths archaeologists have found shellfish remnants, mutton chops and chicken bones. Poets recited their work, and hoped for a dinner invitation. The unfortunate Seneca, who had to live above all this activity, was bothered by the noise: ‘...the man who likes to sing in the bath; men who jump into the water with an almighty splash; and then the cries of "Cakes for sale" and "Hot sausages".’
Like the Japanese, the Romans excelled at feelgood ecumenical sleight of hand. Just as a Japanese sento might contain both Shinto and Buddhist references, so the Romans at Bath managed to blend Sulis, the Celtic goddess of the spring, with Minerva, their own 'household goddess' and healer. They made a little shrine to her at the baths, those 'temples of the flesh'.
Temples of the Flesh happens to be the title of a book by Alexia Brue, published by Bloomsbury. Alexia, a rather pretty blonde New Yorker, went round the world on a bathing tour, which sounds like nice work if you can get it. At Takaragawa onsen she tried the mixed sento, emerging naked only to realise that although the bathing was mixed, everybody else was wearing towels.
Well, we all make mistakes. I made one when I said that nobody in medieval Britain took a bath for 500 years. In fact, some castles did have dank rooms you could fill with moat water and bathe in, reaching towards a gargoyle-shaped peg for your scrubbing brush. Me, I'd rather bathe with a troupe of monkeys in a Hokkaido hot spring, looking out at a landscape of snow.
I don't think Britain is going to rediscover public bathing any time soon. The paranoia about, for instance, adults seeing other people's naked children just gets screwed tighter all the time in my beloved no-longer-homeland. The latest dogfight in the battle of the British with their own bodies was reported yesterday in the Education Guardian in a story headlined Complaints Prompt Review of Nude Art. Morley College, a London art school, is trying to decide whether to continue displaying nude drawings and paintings in the public spaces of the college after 'a few people raised a concern over the nature of some of the student artwork displayed at the college'. A decision will be made later this week. I wait with bated breath, on the edge of my sauna seat.
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Date: 2004-09-22 12:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-22 01:12 am (UTC)