A tall white girl walks nude into a Japanese bathhouse…It could be the crux of any number of bad dreams. I stood up awkwardly, pale and gawky, completely naked in a room filled with a hundred or so women. But they were all naked too. I felt the tension leaving my body, hovering and then evaporating into the steam that enveloped me. This was to be enjoyed, even cherished.
Following informative brochures I’d been handed upon entering the onsen in Tokyo’s outskirts, I had stripped off my colorful kimono and walked through the doors into the oasis that housed a dozen steaming pools. Slipping into a little booth and, propped on a short wooden stool, I washed myself thoroughly. First step, done. No faux pas yet.
Gripping the tiny towel I’d been allocated along with the kimono, I sank into my chosen tub—fresh, still water in an outside basin encircled with uneven stones and bamboo. The chilly air hit the hot water and bathed me in a fog, completely anonymous though I couldn’t look more different than any woman near.
Surely, there were nuances that I was missing. I couldn’t understand contentious conversations among mothers and daughters, didn’t know if teenagers were critical of their changing bodies. But from my blissed-out point of view, I snuck a glimpse of something truly beautiful. Women of all ages, shapes and sizes; bathing together. Groups of college-aged girls gossiping in a bubbling tub, a wrinkled grandmother gazing peacefully at a smooth-skinned toddler poking her toes into a warm pool, tense and tired middle aged women draped over private buckets, damp cloths covering their faces.
I felt a twinge of envy. Could my own often nightmarish insecurities have been quelled by a culture that embraced the freedom of lounging publically unclothed with all generations of women? Feelings of vulnerability and acceptance were palpable. Acceptance of one’s body seemed to quite literally be a foreign concept.
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