The origin of public bathhouses in Japan

The Japanese call hot water "ぉゆ" (ぉゆ), which is pronounced "oyu", and you have to pay for bathing. So the public bathhouse is also called "Qian Tang". In the past, in ordinary towns, you could see several chimneys boiling water with money soup. Most families have bath facilities and the number of public bathhouses has been greatly reduced. But Japanese people, especially urbanites, still miss the era of public bathhouses. The popularity of money soup can be traced back to the Tokugawa shogunate era.

Due to the influence of "shallow bath plus shower" in the west, some materials of Japanese bathhouses have changed greatly. It turns out that Japanese people like to sit in the swimming pool and soak their whole body (to their shoulders) in the water, and they don't mind taking a bath with people they don't know at all. Most bathhouses and hot springs meet these two conditions, that is, bathhouses are deep and large. There are many bathhouses in reinforced concrete buildings, but when it comes to bathhouses, people always think of temple-like brick buildings and towering chimneys. Perhaps it can be said that the bathhouse is a "unique" space belonging to the pure land of bliss.

The bathroom is two or three stories high from the outside, but there is only one floor inside. It is said that the former bathhouse did have two floors. In the Edo era, both men and women had long hair and curled it behind their heads, so they needed a place to comb their hair after taking a shower, so the bathroom on the second floor was suitable for the situation at that time. But because there is no such hairstyle, the "combing room" on the second floor has been removed. So the water vapor will not spread to the whole bathroom, but it feels good, so this style of bathhouse has also been promoted.