Finding Tokyo’s soul in sento

「メゾン刻の湯」　小野美由紀, 2018

Maison Toki no Yu, by Miyuki Ono, 2018

In my quest for books set at sento or onsen, I ran across 「メゾン刻の湯」by Miyuki Ono. When Ono had a mental health breakdown and had quit her job, she lost out on the human interaction it had provided. She was living in a cheap apartment without a bath at the time, so every day she went to Hachimanyu Sento in her Yoyogi neighborhood. There she found a different kind of society, one in which people from all ranks of life soak in the bath together. Realizing that everyone is the same once they strip off their clothes gave Ono a real sense of security, and she wanted to write a novel about this experience of stepping away from the constraints of society and finding a refuge.

Miyuki Ono at Kosigiyu, a sento in Tokyo’s Koenji neighborhood

The resulting novel begins on the day Mahiko Minato graduates from college without a job and his apartment lease about to expire. His friend Choko, a half-Malaysian, half-Japanese woman, pushes him to accept a job and accommodations at a dilapidated century-old sento. His roommates/co-workers find it just as hard as Mahiko does to fit in to Japanese society. There is Akira, a former wunderkind in the IT industry who now sleeps in a tiny closet under the stairs; Gospi, a talented software engineer who feels more comfortable in women’s clothing; Ryu, a hair stylist who lost his leg in a childhood accident; and Choko, who has thrown over a prestigious job to become a “courtesan,” as she calls it. The sento’s owner, Totsuta, watches over them all benevolently but offers little practical help. (Typically, when Gospi complains about the noise that Choko and her “clients” make at night, Totsuta’s only comment is that love is the source of creativity, as witness Wagner and Picasso’s masterpieces, inspired by the heartache their mistresses caused.)

The typical smokestack of a sento, in this case the smokestack of Kikusui-yu, a sento in Bunkyo ward that closed in 2015. Source: Bunkyoyouth.com

When Mahiko worries about his future, Totsuta also reminds Mahiko of all the novels written about people who drop out of the real world for a while and then return. Mahiko thinks of society as a monolithic, impregnable world manufactured by people in black suits, but there is an entirely different society at the sento. Looking out at everyone from the bath, Mahiko realizes that there’s not much difference between all the naked bodies, no matter the age, height, skin color, beauty or lack thereof. He had never felt like this in a packed train, where everyone holds their breath and tries to avoid contact, but once he had stripped down and was soaking in the bath, he had a different perspective on his neighbors.

Mahiko also begins to notice his surroundings differently. He takes long walks, initially accompanying Totsuta at his request, but later on his own as well. He notices things that had never entered his field of sight before, particularly discarded wood that would burn well and buildings about to be dismantled (the sento’s baths are heated with a wood fire—if they had to pay for fuel, the sento would have gone under long before). This is reflected in Ono’s writing, which seems to slow down as Mahiko looks outward in a more relaxed way. He has time to notice the way “the angled sun stained half of the living room floor, with the shadow dividing the room into day and night demarcated between Dazai Osamu’s No Longer Human and Oscar Wilde’s Salomé on the bookshelf.” Lounging on the engawa (a veranda running along the outside of a traditional Japanese house and something I covet) on an August evening, he listens to a baseball game on an ancient radio, and compares the sound produced by the speakers to the roughness of a cat’s tongue. He notices that “the sunlight lit up the trees and plants in the yard, dissolving all the time in this world and then crystallizing it again to create one perfect moment,” and wonders if perhaps people feast on fleeting moments of beauty like this for the rest of their lives.

Tsuki no Yu, a sento in Tokyo’s Bunkyo ward that opened in 1927 and closed in 2015; Source: Tokyosento.com

These moments punctuate the many dramas that beset Mahiko and his friends. Totsuta’s grandson, Ryota, who is abandoned at the sento by his mother and is then bullied at school. Gospi is outed on social media as a crossdresser, another roommate becomes involved with a cultish company, and as if that weren’t enough, there are other back stories involving parricide, a religious cult, and discrimination. It might sound overdone to pack so much into a single novel, but I think Ono’s point is that a sento and shared house are some of the only places where people who don’t fit into Japanese society, whether because of their age, background, or physical limitations, can find acceptance (there are even sento that set special hours for people with different gender identities).

The author, Miyuki Ono, and Yusuke Hiramatsu, the third-generation owner of Kosugiyu; Source: Livedoor

For the elderly people who frequent the sento, it is one of the few places where they feel comfortable, but they cause an uproar every day. They all seem to be on the verge of dementia (or over the edge) and totter around the sento on legs as skinny as branches, throwing away their dentures in the garbage and then claiming they’d disappeared, leaving the building clad only in their underwear, and fainting from the heat of the baths. One elderly man even begins to wander into their living quarters just in time for dinner. (In a conversation with Ono, Yusuke Hiramatsu, the owner of Kosugiyu, a sento in Koenji, notes that events aimed at getting older people out into the community generally fail to attract men, but the key exception is outings to sento.)

The novel’s main drama involves the tenuous future of the sento. Mahiko finds records showing that about 1,000 people came to the sento on July 20, 1963. Most homes didn’t have baths, making regular visits to the sento an integral part of their lives and guaranteeing profits for sento. The reality is very different now, and when the sento requires expensive repairs to survive, Mahiko and the others marshal their skills and ingenuity to try and save it. The historical value of the building and its value as a community resource meant nothing to Mahiko—the building just looks run-down to him and it was just coincidence that he’d ended up living in this part of Tokyo. But he knew that some places have significance just by existing in this world, and he felt that the time he and countless others had spent there would all be lost when the roof tiles, the plumbing and the smokestack were pulled up.

This painting of Mt. Fuji on the walls of Tsuki no Yu is now in a museum in Fuji. Source: Jibun Magazine

As Mahiko and his friends get the word out about Toki no Yu, they attract visitors from the media, academia and the community. A professor at an art school brings his students to admire the central wooden pillar holding up the roof, and mourns the way old buildings are being thoughtlessly pulled down. “The city will no doubt be more convenient and comfortable for people from outside of Tokyo. But it’s different for people who continue to live here and see the destruction of what they truly need as the city is transformed.” After the war, when sento were at their peak, there were 2,700 sento in Tokyo—more than the current number of Seven-Eleven convenient stores in the city. In 2017, this was down to 561, but still more than the number of McDonald restaurants (349, in case you were wondering). But numbers have fallen more steeply outside of Tokyo and Osaka, and there is only one sento left in Okinawa. There are many creative initiatives aimed at saving sento and making them integral parts of the community again, so there is still hope. I highly recommend this essay by Sam Holden on how “public baths made Tokyo what it is, and are needed to save its soul.”

Otomeyu, a sento that closed in 2013 after 60 years in business; Source: Furoyanoentotsu.com