＂Soup of God＂： the culture behind bathing, Japanese men and women in hot springs

　　Japanese men and women in hot springs

　　Wen Yi Wang Lu

　　The temptation to take off clothes completely has always been there for human beings, and the Japanese have taken it to the extreme through bathing.

　　"Although the door of Japan is open, it still maintains its own tonality internally. Outsiders can’t get close to it, and they can’t understand it. Only hot springs can accommodate everyone." Mark Edward Harris, a photographer who filmed a series of Japanese bathing culture, said. However, with the deepening of understanding, westerners will gradually discover that they are still a little naive.

　　In 1948, Japan promulgated the Hot Springs Law, which stipulated that "warm water, mineral water, steam and other gases (excluding natural gas) emerging from the ground can be called hot springs if the temperature at the source of the hot springs exceeds 25 degrees or contains a certain amount of hot spring substances." For Japan, which is small and mountainous, the natural gift of hot springs makes the irrational side of Japanese national character firmly wrapped under the rational shell. At first glance, there’s an incredible thing to take for granted.

　　In 1853, Perry led a gunboat to knock on the door of Japan, but was shocked by the mixed bathing method of men and women. In the report sent back to China, he wrote: "The lower classes in Japan are generally more moral than other oriental nationals, but they are really lewd."

　　Troubled by the same problem, American Consul General Harris also asked the local shogunate officials when he was in Shimoda, "Why do people who are meticulous in everything do such harmful things?" The answer he got was this-"It is precisely because of this exposure that the lust accumulated because of mystery and difficulty in venting is channeled to a certain extent."

　　Japanese officials must have racked their brains to come up with their answers. For more than a thousand years, Japanese people have been immersed in the baptism of bathing culture and have long dismissed such a trivial matter as mixed bathing. The theory of lust is mostly an accommodation to western moral standards.

　　In his novel, Osamu Dazai described a young girl sandwiched between two "no-one-feeling" old couples in a public bathing place as "like a pearl attached to a dirty shell and protected by that black shell … a tall, tight body makes people think of a blue peach". In the face of complete honesty, lust is also washed clear and transparent.

　　In fact, when the government banned mixed bathing according to western moral standards, a group of "bloody" Japanese jumped out to defend themselves. Yukio Mishima once said angrily, "All things that westerners think are boring will be abolished, and all things that westerners think are ignorant, grotesque, unsightly and immoral will be abolished. This is civilized civilization. From the westerners’ point of view, the waves are low-level, the attack team is stupid, the caesarean section is barbaric, and the Shinto is ignorant and simple. If all these things are denied, what is left in Japan? There is nothing left. "

　　For the Japanese, bathing with whom is far less important than bathing itself, because bathing bears the responsibility of soul purification.

　　At the beginning of 19th century, Sanma, a Japanese pavilion, said in "Floating World and Wind", which reflected Japanese customs at that time, "Bathing is the best shortcut to education in the world. Whether you are a noble gentleman or a common people, everyone is naked when taking a bath. Just like when you were born, this kind of naked communication makes people forget the high and low, and sublimate to the realm of a Buddha who wants nothing. "

　　In fact, bathing culture evolved from religious ceremonies. In the mid-8th century, many Buddhist classics flowed into Japan with envoys and monks from the Tang Dynasty. One of them, the Greenhouse Classic, advised people to accumulate merits by bathing. This way has something to do with the "Sickness" advocated by the ancient nobles in China. This ritual, which originated from the court and bathed in clear water to clean the body and mind, has evolved into a folk custom of "running water". Many ascetic monks will choose to stand by the stream and purify their bodies and minds with cold rivers, waterfalls and sea water.

　　However, this kind of asceticism changed its temperature in Japan. Japan has 270 volcanoes (80 of which are active volcanoes), accounting for 10% of the total number of volcanoes in the world. It is an important part of the Pacific Rim volcanic seismic belt, the largest volcanic seismic belt on the earth’s surface. Above the "stove" is an unpredictable disaster, but also contains unexpected gentleness. The crisp mountain spring has been heated into a natural gentle country.

　　This made the bathing ceremony warmly embraced by everyone as soon as it appeared, and the dramatic words such as reborn from the fire were also endowed with ambiguous imagination. No wonder there is a famous saying in Kusatsu, a hot spring town where the Ainu people, the indigenous people of Japan, live together: Hot spring bath can cure anything except love.

　　Since then, driven by monks and other role models, believers have flocked to temples to accumulate virtue and decontaminate by bathing, and the earliest public bathhouse-"Qian Tang" has been bred in temples in heian period. To this day, there are still many monks in temples who have to get up early in the morning to collect pine branches and heat a thick-walled clay "fire box" on a slate floor to provide the most authentic service for believers who come to bathe. People believe that "soup bath can get rid of seven diseases and get seven blessings", especially in temples.

　　No matter in which era, hot springs are silently healing the Japanese body and mind.

　　In Japan during the Edo period, the main function of bathing hot springs was to cure diseases, that is, the so-called "soup treatment". Takinoyu, a crane in Akita, was the first "soup farm". Crane soup was originally called Tianze soup, but it was renamed "Crane soup" because the Orion found a crane in the water for healing. Odomomachi, at the western end of Tokyo, has a Chinese tablet in the hot spring shrine, and told a similar story in detail to show authority.

　　The inscription reads, "It is said from the old legend that there used to be a mysterious crane, and an arrow fell to the ground. He went to the place where the rock cliff hot spring was boiling in the Bohai Sea, and extended his neck to slip. If he stayed for two days, the meat was pulled out, and he rushed away. People in the village began to think that there was liquid in the sky, but it was mysterious, so it was called crane soup."

　　Hot springs can cure diseases, so they are called "the soup of the gods", and they are only enjoyed by nobles and privileged classes for a long time. However, this kind of resource, which is not scarce, is difficult to form a monopoly, but accelerates the flow of the common people.

　　In the late Edo period, travel for the purpose of faith or soup treatment became popular among the common people. Because the government has strict control over the population movement, ordinary people can only get the opportunity to go out by visiting the shrine, which has become a "fake note reason" popular all over the country for a time. Because the hot springs are relatively close to the temples, they naturally become a must-see destination for relaxation and leisure.

　　Take the visit of peasant groups to Ise Shrine in Edo as an example: on the way, they will spend one night in Tomoto Hot Spring in Hakone, then go to Daohou Hot Spring in Shikoku, and after returning to visit Kyoto, they will go to Zenkokuji Temple to pay homage, and then stay in Ikaho Hot Spring.

　　And so on, during the slack season, farmers and fishermen will have soup treatment for several weeks before and after going out to sea to eliminate the fatigue of bones and muscles with the power of nature. This way of spa treatment was later called "one-week tour". After Tokugawa Ieyasu unified the whole country, he went to Rehai Hot Springs in Shizuoka Prefecture to recuperate, and also followed the tradition of one week as a cycle.

　　Kiyoshi Inoue once said in "Japanese History": "Since the ancient emperor system became dependent, there have been cases in which some people were designated as untouchables in any era." This situation was not reversed until 1871, when the Meiji government announced that the people were divided into four classes: the royal family, the Chinese family, the gentry and the common people. It was not until after World War II that the new constitution implemented the rights of the "untouchables" that their travel restrictions were finally abolished and they had the right to vote. In order to avoid discrimination, they were also renamed as "tribesmen". However, in front of hot springs, the boundaries of such privileges seem to have become blurred for a long time.

　　In the second half of the 19th century, a large number of westerners poured into Japan, bringing with them western medical and scientific research methods. Belz, a German, made a field survey of famous hot springs in various parts of Japan and published The Theory of Japanese Mineral Springs. In 1886, the Meiji government conducted a more systematic investigation on this basis and published the Japanese Mineral Springs. Although no one can understand the data analysis, the act of data analysis itself proves the efficacy of hot springs.

　　Hot springs give the Japanese an undifferentiated cure. Whether in the middle and late 20th century, when the economy took off, or in the 1980s, when the rapid growth came to an end, hot springs were always properly expressed in national life.

　　As a welfare for employees, "comfort travel" prevailed in the 1950s. Japanese entertainment experts described it this way: "Japanese entertainment is generally to gather at work first, then travel to hot springs by train, take a bath in the hot springs first, and maybe play some mahjong after a few drinks." Under the social trend of "mass production and mass consumption", hot springs dispel people’s excessive ambitions.

　　In the 1980s, Japanese people began to return to a plain life, and the trend that only work is the value gradually weakened. The government also accepted the accusation of "worker bees" from abroad and began to increase legal rest days. Among women, there is a "secret soup fever", that is, a secret and quiet hot spring, especially an open-air hot spring in the wild.

　　In the first month of 1984, Osamu Dazai’s daughter, Yuko Tsushima, and her family returned from a trip to Izu and wrote: "I think it’s not just me. In today’s era, it’s hard for anyone to see others openly, especially the naked body of the opposite sex. Once a year, it’s good to look at men who have taken off their clothes and rethink the meaning of people. " Under the admiration of TV stations and women’s magazines, open-air hot springs have absolute popularity and continue to this day.

　　Since the 1990s, the call for returning to tradition and contacting with nature has been growing. In the introduction of Tangbuyuan Hot Springs, which ranks among the top three hot springs awards every year, you can often see descriptions such as "quiet basin", "as if time has stopped passing", "refreshing fresh air unique to the plateau" and "scattered art galleries".

　　For hundreds of years, the Japanese have finally returned to the idyllic life described in the earliest document recording hot springs, The Customs of Izumo Country: "There are hot springs gushing out by the river, which is a beautiful place overlooking the mountains and the sea. ….. once in the bath, the appearance becomes beautiful, and twice all diseases are removed. This effect has never failed since ancient times. Therefore, people call it’ the soup of the gods’. "

　　There are three kinds of baths in Japan, including hot springs, and the other two are family baths and public baths.

　　No matter what kind of bathing form, cleanliness is of little importance to the Japanese. If it is a "washing culture" to clean the dirt on the body surface by shower in Europe and America, then Japanese bathing can be called a "soaking culture" suitable for meditation.

　　In Japanese culture, "Ai" and "Silence" also correspond to the cultural connotation behind bathing. "Ai" stands for cleanliness, while "Silence" stands for simple beauty infiltrated from the inside, which is often irrelevant to wealth and status.

　　The standard bath process requires people to wash their bodies before entering the bath. Towels and various types of detergents can’t be mixed into the bath. If you enter the bath with a bath towel because you are shy, you will be criticized by strangers who share the bath. In the book "A Remembrance", Xu Guangping once recalled the embarrassing incident that Lu Xun accidentally took a bath in a hot spring when he was studying in Sendai in the 1920s: Lu Xun covered his lower body, crouched awkwardly in the hot spring and dared not stand, and some Japanese girls came naked to criticize him for feudalism.

　　For most Japanese, bathhouse memory is not only a collective memory, but also a social place to escape from reality. Here, people can have a hearty "naked communication". The smell of dry towels, steaming steam, the "pattering" sound of clogs, and the dependence of calling friends. Without any social background, class difference and status discrimination, it is completely the communication between "people" and "people", which attracts people to return to the bathhouse again and again.

　　In the distant era of people’s hearts, the bathhouse has become the only place that people are worried about, whether with others or with themselves. In Japan, even the smallest apartment can find a deep bathtub, enough for an adult male to sit in and meditate. If it is a family, the bathing sequence is usually adult men, children and adult women. Every family member will cover the bathtub with a plastic cover after bathing to save heat for the next person, and the water will not be poured out until everyone has bathed, including guests staying at home. Smart Japanese calculation found that the whole family can save 7100 yen by sharing a tub of water for bathing. Using bath water for washing clothes, watering flowers and flushing toilets can save 4200 yen.

　　Japanese psychologists interpret immersion culture as a human instinct. They think that human beings are born with the desire to return to their mother’s fetus. Soaking in the bathtub is like soaking in amniotic fluid in the mother’s abdomen, which gives them a sense of security and peace of mind, so they feel liberated from fatigue and feel very happy after taking a bath.

　　And scientific research has confirmed this. Bathing can promote the secretion of hormones in the body. When entering the bath for the first time, sympathetic nerves take the lead, people’s blood pressure rises, their heart beats faster, and their blood sugar will also rise. After that, in order to correct this "abnormal" state, parasympathetic nerves gradually took advantage, blood pressure began to drop, pulse dropped, and blood sugar decreased. Under the alternation of the two cycles, the human body gradually recovers its balance, and the body and mind get a sense of relief, which is the source of happiness.

　　This kind of happiness turns into a unique aesthetic imagination in Japanese writers’ works.

　　Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, once said frankly: "Soaking in hot springs is happier for me than anything else. I want to spend my life in hot springs." He also lived up to his ideals. In Kawabata Yasunari’s novels, hot springs go hand in hand. "Dancer of Izu" tells the pure love story of a preppie student with a hot spring girl while traveling in Izu. The story was written in the Tangdao Hot Spring in Tianchengshan, Izu, and described the Tangye Hot Spring in Hejin Town.

　　Even Haruki Murakami, who loves western culture, regards the pleasure brought by hot springs as the supreme life experience. He said: "If readers can feel a bit of warmth as deep as a hot spring bath from my works, it will be really gratifying."

　　From many years ago, the Japanese realized that there was a steady stream of wealth bubbling out of hot springs.

　　The government invested in the construction of hot spring towns and natural trails leading to hot springs in various places. Traditional hot springs themselves pay more attention to the harmony with nature. Architectural layout, history and culture, places of interest and historical sites, and even mountaineering, skiing and traditional craft experience are all integrated into it, making hot springs an irresistible national pride.

　　According to the statistics of the Japanese Ministry of the Environment on hot spring resources and utilization in 2014, there are 27,405 hot spring sources in China, and nearly 130 million Japanese nationals stay in hot spring hotels every year, which is equivalent to the total population of Japan.

　　No matter where you come from, no matter what you encounter, you can easily stroll on the streets of the hot spring town. Your clothes will fade with your troubles and put on a light bathrobe. If it is winter, you should put on a small coat called "Half-wrapped". The magic of water is constantly fermenting in the senses, and the warm current that moistens the body and mind may be the deepest love from nature.

　　Bathers are usually not allowed to bring anything into the water, so people often put towels on their heads.

　　People who are keen on hot springs are not limited to humans. Snow monkeys in Japan often bathe in hot springs. In the hot springs of Hell Valley in Ueno County, you can often see monkeys soaking in the hot springs all day long, and their obsession is no less than that of human beings.

　　In the Shaoshao Hot Spring in Gunma County, there is an open-air hot spring where you can dig a hole on the river beach by hand to let the spring water gush out. There, you can get a precious experience of being integrated with nature.

　　Hyotan hot spring in Kyushu, Japan. The pattern of hot springs is similar to meditation by the stream when the early monks are ascetic.

　　Standard cleaning supplies before soaking.

　　By stepping on the needle and pressing the footboard, you can stimulate the acupuncture points and play the role of foot massage.

　　China Newsweek, No.29, 2018

　　Disclaimer: The publication of China Newsweek is authorized in writing.