The clothing-optional soaking pools at Doe Bay.
  • Monica Bennett
  • The clothing-optional soaking pools at Doe Bay.

I couldn't tell what the eager, naked Japanese man wanted from me, but I was a visitor in his country—the international rules of etiquette dictated that it was my responsibility to try and figure it out.

There were maybe a dozen of us, all naked and squatting on short plastic stools in front of a wall of spigots. This was my first visit to a Japanese sento, but I knew I was expected to wash thoroughly before moving to the soaking tubs in the next room—where men sat in hot water, white washcloths draped over their heads, emitting a chorus of low, grumbling sighs like a pack of water buffalo who'd just finished a large dinner.

I had been living in a small town in Japan for a few months and was getting used to being a gawk magnet—schoolgirls wanting to take pictures with me, fellow diners not-so-subtly watching me eat in restaurants. Now I felt slightly more naked than everyone else.

The man nodded enthusiastically and twirled his finger in the air. He wanted me to turn around. I complied, a little nervously, and he—to my surprise—began gently scrubbing my back. Then he turned around so I could return the favor. The awkwardness evaporated, replaced by a feeling of almost fraternal tenderness. As we walked to the soaking room, it occurred to me that bathhouses like this one, where most Japanese families washed until the 1960s, are more than just a place to get clean. Stripping down and bathing together can be re-humanizing.

It reminded me of my first adventure in public bathing as a teenager at the Oregon Country Fair, a hippie/vaudeville festival whose outdoor showers and large sauna can accommodate more than 100 bathers at a time. My initial shyness on walking in and putting my clothes in a cubbyhole was quickly replaced by a newfound curiosity about the human form—not just the classically beautiful bodies a 16-year-old would normally spend a lot of energy trying not to stare at, but all the bodies, big and little, saggy and taut, scarred and tattooed, young and old, hairy and sleek, pink and brown and mottled.

In her 12th-century treatise on medicine, the nun, composer, theologian, physician, receiver-of-visions, and all-around polymath Saint Hildegard von Bingen uses a strange word: virgichtiget. It's not in the Oxford English Dictionary (nor Google Translate), but Saint Hildegard repeats it throughout her Physica to describe how parts of the body and mind might feel arthritic, pained, weak, or generally fucked up. "One who is virgichtiget," she writes, "and from it has been made a bit mad, with a divided mind and crazy thoughts, should take a sauna bath."

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