Tsukasa Yu: "hill bath"

I visited Tsukasa Sento after aikido practice one Saturday afternoon. I arrived after eating lunch with a classmate and milling about. She showed me a tiny boutique bagel bakery around the corner from the sento. Behind the partition, I could see a woman scooping the boiled bagels from a vat of hot water, like so many fish. The bath is between Kobe and Motomachi stations, a short walk from the aikido dojo.

Aikido class was relaxed and fun. After class Sensei Nakao led a deep stretching session and I felt air rush into parts of my lungs that felt dark and cobwebbed, an empty attic space in the part of my lungs against my spine. Getting to the bath rewarded my early morning heroism in overcoming my cat-like morning laziness.

The façade is solid below, but dissolves in sunlit glass bricks filling in the concrete structural frame near the top. Inside, the baths were dim, although I entered around 2:30 or 3 pm in the afternoon, because the bath infills between two buildings. Not much daylight is available, but the dimness is heightened by the frosting on the windows which filters even more light, making the space feel lazy and faded. Although I expected to see those glass bricks enclosing the outdoor bath, they must have been for decoration only. Perhaps they were a little visual pun on the notion of splashing water. 

Old naked women gathered crouched and seated at the edge of the hottest bath. Coming up the stairs, I couldn’t quietly slip in since I was walking right into their sleepy gazes. Alone, a newcomer, and a foreigner, I have to show a thick skin. Perhaps they are curious, or perhaps they fear the unknown that I somehow symbolize. Although the layout of the bath is tidy and spatially efficient, the arrival could be massaged, quieted, so the bathers are looking toward some other corner. Of course, in such a simple space, nothing could be more interesting than an unanticipated entrance.

I like the rigorous sameness of the bath’s typology. Cleaning and soaking oppose one another, the cleaning a piece of theatre for the relaxing bathers. With your back turned, you get to the business of scrubbing yourself. In the bath your eyes focus and unfocus on the bodies and rising steam and glowing windows: thoughtless and un-judging voyeur. 

The sameness tells us how to behave and lets uncontrolled local variation emerge. Such as, at this sento each bath circulates water from a wide thin cascade of water coming from above, and leaving in a gap at the edge. This gap also conveniently allows a bather to enter and exit the bath. The little unnecessary pleasure of walking through a waterfall to get into the bath seems dear and so simple. The only other excess of this sento were some artificial rocks composed in a lounge aside the outdoor bath.