Sea Bathing and the Process of Its Acceptance in the Late Nineteenth-Century Japan

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the situation and the process of acceptance of sea bathing during the Meiji era. In Japan, only a few people living in Ono (Aichi Prefecture) had customarily bathed in the sea (shiotoji) since the 13th century. Most of the Japanese, however, never bathed in the sea till the Meiji era.The idea of sea bathing, based on a German medical book, was introduced into Japan in 1881. The first bathing beach in Ono was opened in the following year, and the second one in Oiso (Kanagawa Prefecture) in 1885. Sea bathing in the Meiji era was intended to cure certain diseases, such as tuberculosis, internal diseases and women's diseases. At the time, it was thought that strong waves on a rock beach were needed in order to give intense stimuli for the skin. Nevertheless, the practice of immersing oneself in strong waves did not become popular among the Japanese.At that time, there were two types of sea bathing. One was the way to plunge into the sea directly (cold sea bathing), and the other was to bathe in heated sea water (hot sea bathing). Hot sea bathing was a way of making people accustomed to cold bathing little by little.By the way, the Japanese have a time-honored custom of taking a hot-spring cure (called toji). People regarded hot sea bathing as the same behavior as the hot-springcure, and this accounts for the quick spread of sea bathing to many people. Eventually, sea bathing was accepted by Japanese as a variation of hot-spring cure, and it has spreaded over many of the coastal areas of the country (Fig. 7).