Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/189

 At some of the great mineral springs there are now separate pools for men and women, in deference to foreign prejudice; but more than one generation will pass before promiscuous bathing is done away with.

At all medicinal springs the baths are owned and managed by the Government and are free to the people. Here at Yumoto, men, women, and children walk into the one large room containing the pools, undress, lay their clothing in a little heap on the raised bench or platform running around the edge of the room, and step into the water; and, as has been said, no one sees any impropriety in this custom. Women sit or kneel on the edges of the pool, scouring themselves with bags of rice-bran, and chattering with their friends in or out of the water. People stop at the open doors, or breast-high windows, to talk to the bathers, and conduct is as decorous, as reserved, and as modest as in a drawing-room. The approach of a foreigner sends all the grown bathers deep into the water, simply out of respect to his artificial and incomprehensible way of looking at natural things. They know, though they cannot understand, that the European finds something objectionable, and even wrong, in so insignificant a trifle as being seen without clothes.

At our tea-house in Yumoto our three rooms in the upper story were thrown into one during the daytime, making an apartment open to the gallery on three sides. Hibachis, or braziers, with mounds of glowing charcoal, tempered the morning and evening air, and all day we could sit on piles of futons, and enjoy the superb picture of mountains and lake before us. We were poled over the placid water in a queer ark of a boat, and the mountain-paths were always alluring, the roughest trail often passing under torii, or leading past some shrine, just when it seemed that no foot had ever preceded ours. At night, when the chilling air presses the sulphur fumes 173