The Meiji Restoration In Japan

Meiji period

With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan moved rapidly toward modernization, which was largely synonymous with westernization. The whole country was studied the western knowledge, included the political structures, architectures, and other aspect of culture. Bathing was also influenced by the importation of new technology from the west.

In the beginning of Meiji, bathhouse began to proliferate and in a more modern style. The public bathhouse numbers was increased hugely. There were several reasons behind, first, the elimination of the warrior elite and their private bathing facilities, then more people demand for the bathhouse; second, the migration of thousands people moving to urban centre with the construction of factories and business, brings the demand for bathhouse to; third, the economic incentive for bathhouse operators as the demolition of buildings that the previous warrior families had, provides a cheap materials to construct the bathhouse as wells as the cheap fuel to heat the water.

During the Meiji period, despite the changes in technology, the design of Japanese baths remained unique Japanese style. The outlook of the building still the Buddhist-influenced style. The narrow entrance to the bathing area was widened to a regular sized sliding door, the bathtubs were sunk half in the floor so that customers can be entered easier, and the ceiling height of the bathhouse was doubled. As the bath now is focusing on hot water rather than steam, windows can be added for air convection, and the bathing area became much brighter that the atmosphere earnest welcomed by customers. The bathing walls were full of paintings and advertisements. The only difference of these baths to the modern bath was the use of woo...

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...ise after 1980s. It is obvious that social bathing is still alive and well in Japan today. Although sento was decline dramatically, however, the other form of public bath exists, the health centers, fitness centers, saunas, and senior centers are all evidences of the continuing practice of social bathing. Julian(2009) said that "Bathhouse is not nostalgic, it is not only about the past. The problem of nostalgic is that it doesn't imagine a future. It's always looking backward." Bathhouse is still exist in today, it is not a nostalgic, it still has regular customers.

Conclusion

To sum up, during Japan's late medieval period, the bath had changed from a religious meaning into a social and cultural institution of significance. Bathing had start to become common by 1600. People bath in several reasons, for personal hygiene, physical therapy, recreation and leisure.