Customs and Etiquette in Japan

“In Japan one must spend at least half his time in the bath tub if he wants to be thought up to the customs of the country. Eminent doctors have agreed that the Japanese carries his cleanliness too far and makes too frequent use of his bath, which he always takes boiling hot. The hot bath is advisable in this climate, as every one soon learns by experience, and the publicity of the bath tubs, which are barely screened from the passers by in the streets, is a revelation of Japanese modesty. For centuries this nation has had her public baths, while we of the New World have brought them into our cities with the past generation.” 

Japan is a land of small things, and this fact is impressed on one as he goes from city to city, where he sees every family, however poor, occupying its own house and enjoying an existence apart from every other household—a state of things wholly unknown to the overcrowded centers in the United States and Europe. Most strangers have the impression that the people of Japan and China are so crowded together in their cities that they scarcely have breathing room. That this is a mistake is discovered on reaching Tokio, which numbers half a million less inhabitants than does New York, yet extends over 100 square miles. 

One may start out in a kuruma in the early morning and ride the greater part of the day through the residence portion of the capital of Japan, looking out upon the one-story wooden buildings. The foreigner who goes to Japan to see things, avoids the railroad when he contemplates short journeys or pleasure excursions into the country. Railway travel is cheaper in Japan than any other mode of traveling, but the natives prefer to travel by water or by kurumas if they are not going a great distance. When one contemplates traveling about over the country his route must be specified minutely, and no deviations are allowed other than his passport calls for. There is no more delightful trip than a ride of a few hours through the rice fields and mulberry plantations, beautified by lotus ponds. The mulberries have no chance to grow up into the trees, but are simply clusters of green leaves on the tender shoots which feed the silkworm. 

You are surprised that at the inns everywhere you eat in your own room, as there is no such thing as a separate dining room. When you arrive at an inn, they assign you a room in which you sleep, eat and entertain your friends. All this is quite compatible with comfort, for at the clapping of your hands, your dinner table glides in, guided by a pretty Japanese girl, who kneels and bows before you so often, as she comes and goes, that you begin to wonder if you are not a Prince instead of an ordinary traveler seeing the sights of the orient. 

The fine tablecloth is spread and the dishes appear as if by magic, one girl serving each guest. You sit on your mat with your chin on a level with the tiny table and its hand-painted china, and all your wants are looked after without your having to utter a command. The samisen played by nimble fingers aids your digestion and supplies the finishing touch to the dinner. After the meal the girls remove tho table and all traces of the dinner and the dining room becomes the reception room. The college professor may be one of the curious callers, and as Japanese etiquette permits a man to stretch out his visit to any length from two hours to ten, you are the unwilling victims of the professor's insatiable curiosity, which permits him to ask questions pertinent and impertinent. For instance, when you show him a pair of very old and handsome bracelets, a brooch and an amulet collected in a trip through the country, he insists on knowing the exact price of each. 

At bedtime the little girls came running in, their arms filled with quilts and white sheets, which they spread on the floor for beds. Then they bring the makura, or pillows, which are little wooden boxes with rocker bottoms, and the most uncomfortable inventions that ever sprang from the brain of man. Across the entire room they stretch a large mosquito net. Their duties at an end, they retire with many bows and leave you to woo sleep between the sheets on the hardest floor in Christendom. 

In Japan one must spend at least half his time in the bath tub if he wants to be thought up to the customs of the country. Eminent doctors have agreed that the Japanese carries his cleanliness too far and makes too frequent use of his bath, which he always takes boiling hot. The hot bath is advisable in this climate, as every one soon learns by experience, and the publicity of the bath tubs, which are barely screened from the passers by in the streets, is a revelation of Japanese modesty. For centuries this nation has had her public baths, while we of the New World have brought them into our cities with the past generation. 

The Japanese have a multitude of quaint customs, many of which have common sense as their basis. When a guest has outworn his welcome, the mistress of the-house does not grow outwardly impatient in his presence and throw out little hints of what duties will claim her attention soon, but she prepares the daintiest luncheon imaginable and puts it into the prettiest of boxes, which she wraps with rice paper and ties with a ribbon. Then, come morning when no other members of the household are present, all having been warned to keep out of the way, she puts the lunch box with the sweetest of smiles into his hands. Before the lunch hour the guest, if he be wise, has vanished like a morning cloud, and no one can tell whither. Even the poorest people have the habit of going every morning between the hours of 5 and 7 to the water's edge, carrying in their hands their tooth brushes, which they use vigorously as soon as they reach the stream, which is not any too clean because it flows down from the rice fields. – Los Angeles Herald, 1904

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Japanese Toilet and Bath Etiquette

“Bathroom etiquette might seem universal, but there are quite a few differences in Japan that could surprise you. While modern hotels and cities that handle international visitors frequently are more accommodating to Western concepts, a trip to more traditional or rural areas – or even someone's house – requires knowledge of Japanese bathroom etiquette.” – writer, Umiko Sasaki, (Image source, Pinterest )

Using Traditional Japanese and Western-Style Toilets

There's a big difference between a traditional Japanese toilet and the Western style to which Americans are accustomed. The Japanese toilet is sunken into the ground, with a hood covering part of it to prevent water from splashing up when you flush. To use it, you squat or kneel facing the hood with your legs on either side of the toilet. A lever or button near the hood flushes the toilet.

The Western-style toilet looks almost exactly as you would expect in Western countries but is often electronic and features several buttons with various wash and dry functions for men and women. If the seat feels warm when you sit down, it probably has a heated seat function. The traditional Japanese toilet is still used in the majority of public restrooms throughout Japan, but Western-style toilets are prevalent in metropolitan areas.

Sound Princess

One function of the Western toilet in Japan is famous enough to warrant its own section. The Japanese, particularly women, consider it good manners to silence any sounds you make in the toilet stall. Because of this, many toilets have a Otohime or "Sound Princess" feature. The Otohime masks all sounds by replicating a toilet flushing. This also saves water, as the user doesn't have to flush the toilet more than necessary.

Bathroom Slippers

The Japanese take off their shoes when entering a private residence and put on house slippers. The bathroom is considered an entirely separate part of the house, and usually family members and guests are expected to take off their house slippers and use a pair of bathroom slippers when entering. Though it might seem a foreign concept to Western minds, it's an important factor when visiting a house or traditional Japanese hotel. Take off the bathroom slippers immediately upon exiting and put on your house slippers.

The Japanese Bath

If you stay in a modern hotel you sometimes have the option of a bathtub or shower, but in a homestay situation or more traditional hotel, you're expected to use the shower first to cleanse your body and the bathtub only for soaking purposes. Not only is it bad manners to wash yourself in the tub, but it's actually unsanitary. To conserve water, every member of the typical Japanese household bathes in the same water, only draining the tub when everyone is finished. By using soap and washing yourself in the bath, you disrespect the people who bathe after you.– By Umiko Sasaki for USA Today

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette, Custom and Conscience

In the 1980 historical miniseries, Shogun, John Blackthorn, self-conciously bathing with Mariko, is the first English person to arrive in Japan and must find a way to survive in a culture which considers him to be a barbarian due to his European habits (eating the meat of birds he has killed, eating with one’s hands and rarely bathing.)– photo source Pinterest

It is said that “it is conscience that makes cowards of us all,” and there is much talk ot the “whisperings or conscience,” the “wee small voice” and all that; but whence comes that voice? Is there an immutable principal of right and wrong placed somewhere in the mind that tells one of right and wrong? Or is, it not custom —that to which we have been accustomed? A writer in the New York Sun says that travelers in Japan tell of the unconcern with which a Japanese will take a bath in full publicity, and the custom has impressed foreigners as immodest. 

An Englishman who has been long in the country says there is really nothing immodest in the promiscuous bathing of men, women and children from a Japanese point of view. With them, cleanliness is the object sought for, and the etiquette of the bathroom differs from the etiquette of the parlor. With Europeans, he says, the attitude of waltzers is only permitted when the music is played. It is something like this with the Japanese bathers. When the necessary operation of washing or doing other work requires it, to strip becomes a duty. 

On the other hand, a Japanese woman would scorn to appear decollete. To her eye, our ballrooms are an astonishment, and the exposure of the person for display is incomprehensible. This writer thinks that the Japanese are not excelled by their Western brethren in modesty.– Weekly Colusa Sun, 1892

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Bathing-Machine Etiquette

If Asmodeus or some other imp could reveal to the thoughtful critic, the private lives of the bathers of America, France, England and Japan, it would be possible to ascertain which of these codes of bathing etiquette is associated with most correct and purest lives ; but as the data are not all accessible, each of us may draw the conclusion he pleases. 

Bathing Machine Etiquette

Apart altogether from the wide difference, between the description of bath used by various nationalities — differences dependent somewhat upon climate — there is great diversity in the etiquette surrounding the bath. In Western Europe, England and the United States, the private bathroom is usually occupied by one individual at a time, but the etiquette of sea-bathing in England differs widely from that of this country, which has adopted the bathing customs of the continent of Europe, or rather those of France. 

In England, the beach of seaside resort exhibits several ranges of little wooden houses on wheels, called "bathing machines." The proprietors, or attendants, who have an office near, are on the lookout for bathers, and for a small sum give the bather the exclusive right to a machine, which is immediately drawn into the water to a convenient depth for a plunge.

The bathing machines for men are always separated by a considerable distance from those for women, who always wear a bathing dress consisting of a long loose gown. The men wear a waist cloth, or nothing, according to the measure of their own prudery or that of the town authorities. Most bathing machines have a hood, which can be let down so as to secure privacy, and the very prudish of both sexes stay inside its protective folds. The sexes never associate while in the water, so that sea-bathing in England seems a solemn affair for the young men and women of this country, who love the sea bath for the chances it affords for flirtation and exhibition of physical proportions. 

Sirens and lady-killers have but scant opportunities at Brighton or Hastings, compared with those they enjoy at Long Branch or Cape May. The latter are reduced to watching, glass to eye, from the promenade or hotel windows, the capers of the former as they coyly crouch at the edge of the tide, or float far out upon the waves. There can be no romping and dipping, no close inspection of sinewy or graceful contours, no admiration of artistic abbreviation of costume; but, to make some slight amends. Old Neptune flirts with the long blue dresses and lifts them past prudery line.

In Japan they have no nonsensical prudery. Men and women bathe together, and a man does not scruple to introduce his friend of his own sex to his wife or daughter as all stand vesture-less in the water. Properly interpreted, this shows that a Japanese husband has more confidence in his wife and more in his friend than any Celt, Teuton or Anglo-Saxon has yet developed. If the confidence is warranted by the want of results, this absence of prudery is a decided step toward a higher civilization. 

If Asmodeus or some other imp could reveal to the thoughtful critic, the private lives of the bathers of America, France, England and Japan, it would be possible to ascertain which of these codes of bathing etiquette is associated with most correct and purest lives ; but as the data are not all accessible, each of us may draw the conclusion he pleases. — Philadelphia Record, 1885

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia