NAOKO KUBOTA, Nikkei senior staff writer
Chikanobu Yoshu's "Ikaho Onsen Hanei no Zu," date unknown, shows a luxurious hot spring in what is now Gunma Prefecture. © Courtesy of the University of Tokyo's General Library
TOKYO -- Ukiyoe, woodblock prints, are like windows into the Japan of years gone by. They also provide a peek at the beginnings and development of a business that continues to thrive today -- onsen, volcanic hot-spring resorts. Some 3,000 such places dot the country.
Let us start our trip back in time with a print called "Ikaho Onsen Hanei no Zu" (A Picture of Thriving Ikaho Hot Spring). It depicts a resort bath in what is now Gunma Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo. Chikanobu Yoshu, a Meiji-era (1868-1912) woodblock artist famous for pictures of beautiful women, presents a scene of ladies bathing in cascading hot water, while others cool off in the mountain air. If it makes the place look tempting, that was its intention. It was produced as an advertisement for inns in the hot-spring town of Ikaho.
The upper-left corner of the print lists the benefits of the town's baths. It says they are effective for relieving women's diseases, rheumatism, nervous disorders and paralysis, among other ailments. It claims they can even revive dying plants, and that goldfish and carp raised in the hot springs grow nice and plump. This is why a woman on the lower right holds a stem of a blooming peony, while well-rounded goldfish swim in a tank in front of her.
Some inns really did keep carp prior to World War II, a local tourist guide said. "They were called yukoi (hot-water carp)," explained 84-year-old Seiji Tominaga, who has served as a guide for 14 years while running a sundry store. Tominaga added that one particular inn kept cranes in its steaming pond. "The onsen inns of Ikaho in those days were extravagant," he said.
Climb the stone steps in the heart of Ikaho and you can see hot water streaming down from the mountains. It was not until the Edo period (1603-1867) that the onsen tradition became popular among ordinary people. Over time, a system was developed to distribute the water to bathing facilities lining the steps, while strictly controlling the amount of water. The piping was equipped with mechanisms so that, when a bathhouse reached its quota, the water would be redirected back to the main artery.
Geological issues
Japan's onsen eventually attracted overseas visitors as well, as shown in Utagawa Hiroshige III's "Kozukenokuni Ikaho Onsen Hanei no Zu" (A Picture of Thriving Ikaho Hot Spring in Kozuke Province) -- Kozuke being an area encompassed by modern Gunma. Erwin Baelz, a German doctor who stayed in the country during the Meiji era, made plans to build large spas in the hot-spring towns of Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, just southwest of Tokyo, and Kusatsu, Gunma Prefecture. Baelz preached the importance of balneotherapy, treating disease through bathing.
But the story of onsen is not merely one of beauty, health and relaxation. The collection that includes Hiroshige III's print, held by the University of Tokyo's library, consists mostly of disaster pictures.
The collection includes prints of catfish -- legend had it that giant catfish lived underground and caused earthquakes. Prints typically show people beating them out of revenge. Other prints show eruptions of Mount Bandai and Mount Asama, along with massive tsunamis hitting the Hokuriku region on Japan's main island. Also included are reports of an Edo period earthquake and a major quake that struck Tokyo in 1923. There are also prints of various onsen.
The materials serve as a reminder that the geology which creates Japan's hot-spring water is a mixed blessing.
Diaries, guidebooks, travel notes and topographies from the Edo period reveal the wide variety of onsen visitors in those days, including writers, Confucianists and officials of feudal clans. But ukiyoe prints of onsen are strangely limited geographically, depicting resorts in eastern Japan, such as Ikaho and Hakone, but few hot springs in the country's west.
Mitsunobu Sato, director of the Ukiyo-e Tokyo art museum, explained: "While woodblock print artists in western Japan focused on portraits of Kabuki actors, their counterparts in eastern Japan preferred to render manners and customs."
At any rate, at least until the middle of the Edo period, onsen were used primarily for treating illnesses and injuries, according to "Edo no Onsengaku" (Balneology in the Edo Period), a 2007 book by Tadanori Matsuda. Individuals would stay for a minimum of a week at spas, and sometimes for up to three or four weeks.
Some old guidebooks on hot springs list the do's and don'ts of bathing. They call customers who go in the water several times a day "greedy" and urge readers not to bathe early in the morning, when hungry, as well as not to drink alcohol and not to allow yourself to be consumed by lust. Onsen were taken very seriously back then, whereas today they are simply places to go and relax.
"Nanayu no Shiori," a guidebook on seven Hakone spas, maintained the no-nonsense approach when it was published in 1811. It reminds readers that hot springs are "not places to go and entertain yourself," said Yusuke Nosaka, chief curator at the Hakone Local Museum.
However, around the time "Nanayu no Shiori" came out, the hot-spring tradition was already shifting. Another book, "Hakone Onsenshi" (The History of Hakone Hot Springs), hints at how baths became mainstream tourist destinations.
From therapy to tourism
The seven Hakone spas were established around the same time as the Tokaido road. The route connecting Edo -- the old name for Tokyo -- and Kyoto was Japan's busiest and most important route. A practice of lugging hot-spring water along the road to Edo Castle began in 1644.
Each year, the Edo government chose a hot spring and dispatched a magistrate to one of its inns. Two barrels of the chosen water were sent to the capital daily. It was forbidden to let the sealed casks touch the ground until they arrived at the castle.
The procession along the Tokaido road carrying barrels for the shogun raised Hakone's profile as a spa town, prompting people to try it themselves. An 1805 government decision effectively ended the tradition of long-term onsen therapy.
Odawara inns, in what is now Kanagawa Prefecture, had lost customers to rivals in nearby Hakone, which allowed shorter stays. They pleaded with the government to clamp down on this, but it refused. After that, competition intensified.
A comic novel published in 1844 tells the story of a fun-loving trio's travels around Hakone, illustrated by ukiyoe artist Keisai Eisen. The novel suggests that it was around this time that touring hot springs became a popular pastime.
Utagawa Hiroshige I (1797-1858), one of the most popular ukiyoe artists and painters at the time, later experienced the joy of soaking after a long journey and was inspired to create a series of woodblocks. After a month-and-a-half tour around the Edo region with three male and female companions in 1851, he gathered what he had drawn along the way.
The following year, he produced woodblock prints showing seven rustic hot-spring villages in Hakone, adding to the canon of onsen imagery -- and helping to further spread the word to the masses.
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