A "Good Sweat" in the Sauna!

I was unlucky enough to graduate during a major recession after the oil shock, and with no job prospects, I joined my father's company. He told me, "We're just about to open a sauna, so you're going to be the manager" (laughs). I started without even knowing what a sauna was.

Is that so?

Back then, saunas were electric and around 100 degrees Celsius, like a form of torture (laughs). They were places for getting a massage or for wealthy people to stop by before a night of drinking.

Eventually, they became places to stay overnight, and now, people have come to enjoy low-temperature löyly (generating steam by pouring water on heated sauna stones). Now, young fans are enjoying it. I never thought it would turn out like this, so I'm deeply moved.

My father was a huge sauna enthusiast and went all the time. When he said, "Let's go have some fun," it was his way of saying, "Let's go to the sauna together" (laughs). At first, I thought, "I don't want to go into a hot room," but as he kept taking me, I gradually grew to like saunas.

After I started working, I used saunas as a refuge to heal my tired body. Once I had a bit more leeway, I became interested in saunas all over the country and even the world, and I became captivated by their charm.

I wanted to give back to the saunas that had helped me and contribute to their popularization, so I published a mook (magazine-book) called "Saunner" in 2014. I also wanted to conduct various research on saunas, so I established the Japan Sauna Research Institute and have been active there.

I first encountered saunas in my first year as a working adult. One day, my boss took me, and at first, it was incredibly tough. But after the sauna, I got into a cold bath, and while I was resting afterward, I experienced a sensation of total release throughout my body. I thought, "This feels amazing," and from then on, I started a routine of going to the sauna once a week.

Later, I was out drinking with an old friend I hadn't seen in about 10 years, and he said, "Actually, I really like saunas." At the time, I didn't know anyone my age who liked saunas, so we totally hit it off.

So you found a comrade.

He and I used to talk about how we'd like to open our own dream sauna someday. We figured we had to know about the real deal in Finland, so we went to the Finnish embassy.

Someone at the embassy told us, "If you want to do a Finnish sauna, you have to go to the source." So, three of us flew to Finland, experienced the difference between Japanese and Finnish saunas firsthand, and created a company called "Mizu Japan" to promote Finnish saunas.

Frankly, during the bubble economy, saunas were just nap houses for drunkards, and that accounted for about 80% of our revenue. We didn't have mobile phones yet, so during the day, individual real estate agents would use the place as their office, and calls would come in for them to exchange information. All the phones in the shop were constantly being answered by real estate agents.

That's amazing.

That all started to go downhill when the bubble burst. But then, Finnish-style saunas centered around löyly became popular, and a new generation of young people emerged with a positive image of saunas.

Then, the Japan Sauna and Spa Association became a major sponsor, and the mook that Harayama-san and his team put out, "Saunner," dramatically improved the image.

Until then, saunas had a very negative image. People would say, "It's like a sauna in here," to describe a hot and stuffy crowded train, or the phrase "collapsed in a sauna" became a common prefix, making them seem dangerous. Why was something so wonderful treated so negatively? The concept of "Saunner" was to change that image. We felt we should properly promote the true nature of saunas as "crisp, refreshing, and pleasant."

As you said, there really wasn't an atmosphere where you could say that going to the sauna was your hobby back then.

No, there wasn't.

Now, the number of young people like Oizumi-san who can say, "My hobby is saunas," has increased considerably. I think we may have helped create that opportunity.

Also, a little after that book, the manga "Sa-dō" by manga artist Katsuki Tanaka had a huge impact. It's short for "The Way of the Sauna," and it conveys the charm of saunas in a unique tone. For example, the feeling of "this feels so good" is expressed with the word "totonotta." That manga was read by a great many people.

That was a big one. In essence, he called the state of mental release you feel when you jump from a hot state into cold water "totonotta." This is quite accurate.

Yeah, yeah. That's right.

Katsuki Tanaka, a sauna beginner, drew endlessly in his manga about why he came to love saunas so much. It starts with things like being scared to go in, or there being strange old men there (laughs).

In Finland, even ordinary homes have a sauna room and an area for cooling down in the open air, where they bathe in the outside air. To put it in Katsuki Tanaka's terms, that's how they are "getting totonotta." That space is extremely important.

The people at the Finnish embassy told me, "A sauna is a sacred space for communication." They said that's the major difference with Japan. I've heard that in the old days, women even gave birth in saunas.

I think Japanese saunas are clean, but there's a vague impression that they were sweaty places for old men to enjoy.

That's right. The expression "kai-kan" (pleasant sweat) is correct in the sense of "pleasant," but the actual moment of sweating isn't that enjoyable.

It's the "totonotta" state that feels good, which comes from jumping into water or being exposed to the open air. In the past, people talked about the stimulating feeling of the moment you enter the water, but the mental pleasure wasn't really mentioned.

I think so, too.

In Finnish saunas, the common way to use them is to pour water to create steam, which is called löyly. And the saunas there are generally set to a milder temperature than in Japan, around 50 to 70 degrees Celsius.

The way they use saunas there is to instantly raise the perceived temperature by doing löyly. "Löyly" is the Finnish word for steam.

Is it like in Japan where you'd say, "That was a good hot bath," they'd say, "That was a good löyly"?

Our löyly automatically pours water every 20 minutes.

We've taken to calling Toho's sauna the "auto-löyly" (laughs).

The image of löyly is like an invisible steamed towel suddenly wrapping around your whole body. You're in a hot sauna, but then another invisible heat hits you with a boom. Then, when it's fanned, blasts of hot air come at you.

A sauna is not something you endure. That's the first difference.

Young people don't like to endure things (laughs).

As Orimo-san said earlier, I don't think sweating is the purpose of a sauna. The purpose of a sauna is to warm the body, and the cold bath is to cool that warmed body. Then, after the sauna and cold bath, you relax in the open air, letting the outside air and wind bring you back to a normal state.

I call this three-part set "sauna bathing," and I believe that only by doing this can one truly understand how to enjoy a sauna.

When we set up a tent sauna at Zushi Beach, I thought we would jump into the sea to cool our bodies, but it turned out we didn't need the sea. After sweating profusely in the tent sauna and stepping outside, the scorching Zushi coast transformed into a cool highland. The breeze on the sand was that pleasant.

Right now, the main activity for "Mizu Japan" is setting up tent saunas at camping events for people to enjoy. We also talk to campsite operators, suggesting, "How about introducing one?"

What's the smallest size, for how many people?

It's for four people. The largest one we have now can fit about 20 people at the same time.

A 20-person one means a big stove, so it probably wouldn't be easy to store in Japan.

That's right. It's quite a challenge.

Recently, there are things called sauna toasters, which are saunas you can tow with a car. Like a camper.

It seems tent saunas were originally used for military purposes. When I tell people in Finland that I'm involved with tent saunas, they react like, "Oh, the military ones."

In Finland, every family has a sauna room in their house. So, the tent sauna was developed for the question, "What do we do if we go somewhere without a sauna?" That's why ordinary Finns don't use tent saunas.

Is that so?

Every house has a sauna, and when they go to stay at their summer cottages on weekends or long holidays, of course there's one there too.

So they almost never bother to set up a tent sauna. However, that's not the case in Japan, so for doing a sauna on Zushi Beach or in the snowy mountains, I think a tent sauna is a very convenient tool.

During the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Sauna and Spa Association's recovery support activities included setting up a tent sauna in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture. It was quite a lot of work, but it was very well-received. Since it was very cold at the time of the disaster, people were extremely grateful.

Being a disaster area, we couldn't afford to be picky. There was a river behind it, so I thought if people could warm up in the tent sauna and just wipe off their sweat, they would be satisfied at the very least.

The Japan Sauna and Spa Association is actively involved in social contribution. In disaster-stricken areas, bathing is the first problem. It's difficult to prepare a large amount of water for baths, so a sauna can be set up easily.

That's right. But even so, it was a hassle, but the local people were incredibly helpful and cooperative. An old man who was at the evacuation center acted as the sauna attendant all by himself, gathering scrap wood from the morning and spending hours heating it up. And the people from the fishing village, who I thought wouldn't be satisfied without a bathtub, were overjoyed with the sauna room.

Saunas are surprisingly subtle. In the old style, whether the area around the sauna room was wood or tile made a completely different "flavor" on the skin. In other words, even with the same stove, you get reflected heat. With löyly, the kind of steam you get really depends on the stones.

Oizumi: There's also quite a difference between electric and wood-fired stoves. In Finnish homes, electric is becoming more common now.

Wood is a lot of work, isn't it? It takes a long time to heat up. My shop naturally uses gas. When you use gas for things like tent saunas, it's surprisingly easy, but wood is a job that takes hours.

Regarding the military story earlier, I think that when you're tired or going through a tough time, having a sauna really saves people.

"Sauna" is a Finnish word, and in Japanese, we might say steam bath or hot air bath, but I believe that within the DNA of Japanese people, there is definitely a "sauna-loving" DNA embedded.

To begin with, public baths up until the Edo period were facilities where you would immerse yourself in steam. The habit of soaking in a bathtub as we do now is something that gradually changed during the Edo period. So perhaps Japanese people originally liked steam baths.

It's not so much that they liked it, but that it was the only idea they had.

Right. Of course, there were hot springs, but I believe the bathing method directly connected to daily life was the steam bath. Steam is simpler than boiling a large amount of water.

Yoritomo's father, Yoshitomo, was also killed in a steam bath around the Mino area when he put down his sword and went inside.

Sauna comes from Finland, but hanjeungmak is a Korean steam bath, and in Russia, it's called banya. There are various methods all over the world for immersing oneself in steam.

That's right. Outside of hot springs, you don't hear much about a culture of getting into heated water in other countries. It's probably a matter of cost and effort.

Going into a sauna in a hot country is probably quite rare. Even in Japan, saunas are likely more popular in Hokkaido than in Okinawa.

That's certainly true, but sauna sales in Japan, while of course peaking from December to March, aren't bad in July and August either.

Oh, is that so?

I wonder if they go for the cold bath.

Ultimately, don't you think they want some stimulation for their sluggish, listless bodies? Or perhaps it's just that the Japanese summer is particularly unpleasant.

Oizumi-san, what season do you usually go to Finland?

It's usually during the summer.

That's the best time, isn't it?

Yes, it is. Though I'd really like to go in the winter. There's also something called a smoke sauna. It's a sauna where you burn smoke, then let it all out before going in. I've never experienced it, but I hear those places have a very solemn atmosphere.

Harayama-san, have you been to the Finland Village in Koumi, Nagano?

Of course, I've been there. That place was owned by the Finnish Chamber of Commerce, wasn't it?

Yukitaka Yoneda from Nagoya, who is the executive director of the Sauna and Spa Association, bought the entire place, and now he's turned it into a kind of paradise for sauners (laughs). I hear they're doing a smoke sauna there now.

The one in Koumi is a pit sauna, which is a sauna dug into the ground. I don't think there's anything called a smoke sauna in Japan.

Normally there's a heater and a chimney to let the smoke out, but a smoke sauna is different; it's like having a bonfire inside a house to heat the whole hut. It's dangerous for people to be inside at that time, so you go in after the hut has warmed up. That's why the walls and everything around are covered in soot. It's a truly primitive sauna. Your body can get all black, too.

I feel that the more saunas evolve, the more they devolve, and I get the sense that the older the sauna, the more authentic and wonderful it is. In other words, smoke saunas came first, but because they were dangerous or inconvenient, they evolved to become electric, with chimneys and so on. But I think the older they are, the better they feel.

I recently had the chance to interview Dr. Makio Nakayama directly, and he mentioned that the Spa Association apparently decided that the cold bath should be around 17 degrees Celsius.

Right, right. But lately, everyone is telling us to make it colder (laughs).

Basically, Finland doesn't really have cold baths, right? It's cold enough when you go outside. Russia is the same. So, the culture of cold baths is unique to Japan. I think using a chiller (cooling water circulator) to cool the water is also unique to Japan.

Lately, it's all about lowering the temperature of the cold bath. People like Katsuki Tanaka want it below 15 degrees.

There are people who say that lower temperatures are more stimulating.

That's why we have two. One with a normal temperature and one for the enthusiasts, a really extreme one (laughs).

The single-digit temperature baths... the machine breaks easily. When we lowered the cold water from 17 or 18 degrees to 14 degrees, it broke in six months, and we were charged a pretty penny (laughs).

Is that so?

Apparently, the system for cooling water itself is quite strained. The original idea was that around 20 degrees would be good enough.

I think the optimal temperature is about balance with the sauna room. In other words, it's a matter of balancing how much you can warm your body in the sauna room with how much you can cool it in the cold bath.

There really is no such thing as two identical saunas. The sauna room at each facility is completely different, and how you feel changes depending on where you sit. It's different depending on whether it's crowded or empty, and of course, it's different in summer and winter. The fun lies in finding the way to enjoy the sauna that you like best amidst all these different variables.

Exactly.

There's a reason I named them "sauners." People who surf are called surfers, right? When a surfer rides a wave, no two waves are the same. I think going to a sauna is the same thing.

A surfer paddles before riding a wave. That's the sauna room. You only take off and ride the wave when you get in the cold bath (laughs). In other words, I believe the sauna and the cold bath are a set.

I think it's all about how you enjoy it. In the winter, going to the top of a mountain in Kitafurano, getting piping hot in the sauna room, and then all of us jumping into the fresh snow and screaming was ridiculously fun (laughs).

It's an event. It's one way to have fun.

In the end, it's about how you make it interesting and how you enjoy it.

Before the bubble economy, Japanese saunas were only concerned with "how high can we heat it?" It was an endurance contest between establishments. "Our place can go up to 120 degrees!" kind of thing (laughs).

The customers would be like, "Whoa, this place is 120 degrees, that's awesome."

Among sauners, we call that style "Showa Strong" (laughs).

It was really like that. Everyone was desperately trying to raise the temperature. You probably won't find a place that's 100 degrees now. It hurts your nose (laughs).

But you know, there are people who like that.

Yes, there are people who say things like, "Ah, this is nostalgic."

Those people are traveling all over the country to find such saunas.

But you know, they still exist.

Right. If you look for them, you can find them.

The recent mainstream is probably medium temperature and medium humidity, so maybe 80 to 85 degrees.

Experts say, "70 degrees is fine," but at 70 degrees, customers complain a bit. My place is also around 80 degrees.

As Oizumi-san mentioned, Finnish saunas are around 50 to 70 degrees, but Sky Spa is low, isn't it?

They have a setting that is, so to speak, faithful to the basics, bringing it closer to a Finnish sauna.

Even among people in Tokyo, there are those who say they want to "go all the way to Yokohama" just for Sky Spa. First of all, there's no TV in the sauna room. It's a precious establishment.

That might be one of the big differences.

Experts say things like, "Do nice hot springs in resort areas have TVs?" I think that's true, but I don't have the courage to get rid of the TV (laughs).

Apparently, Finns are surprised to see people watching TV in a sauna room. But I think it's also interesting to pursue that kind of uniquely Japanese sauna style.

At medium temperatures, you can stay in for a longer time, so you can watch TV. Of course, we had TVs since the Showa era, but back then, things that were over in three or five minutes, like sumo or pro wrestling, were good (laughs). Baseball is surprisingly not good. A single batter's turn might not even finish.

Pro wrestling was popular because any part of it is interesting.

These days, even companies have "sauna clubs," don't they?

It seems they're popping up spontaneously from all over.

When I meet people for the first time, quite a few of them say, "I'm a sauner, too."

Those young customers are fundamentally "good customers." Not in the sense of spending money, but they have good manners and know how to use the sauna properly. They don't splash their sweat everywhere, and they use the sauna in a way that makes others want to imitate them a little.

I've heard that in the old days, it was common to go for a drink after work and then say, "Well, shall we go to the sauna?" In other words, a boss would invite his subordinates to the sauna.

Yes, of course.

You basically enter a sauna naked, don't you? It's said that saunas melt the armor of the heart, and when you're naked, the sense of distance does shrink, doesn't it?

Finland even uses saunas for diplomacy. They invite dignitaries and go into the sauna together at official residences or embassies. I think young people today have probably realized this original use.

A place for communication.

Yes. In a sauna club, the department head and the rank-and-file employee are both naked. Isn't it an effective place where they can talk on a completely equal footing? Company A's sauna club might go to a sauna with Company B's sauna club to seek interaction.

That's a great idea.

I think it's safe to say that the number of young people who enjoy it that way has been increasing recently.

Since you're inside a sauna room, you don't talk as much as you would in a pub. So maybe that's a more relaxed aspect of it.

Conversely, you would never talk in a bathtub. In a sauna room, you can exchange a word or two. In that respect, the sauna is superior.

That's right. In Finland, too, everyone seems to be chatting in there. And then there's the open-air cooling after. There's always a space to rest when you get out, and everyone talks quite a bit there.

It's a really nice atmosphere. It's like a locker room after a game, with people drinking vodka or playing chess.

Surprisingly, people don't collapse in the sauna room. The problem is after they get out. The bathtub is far more dangerous.

Yes, the bathtub is much more dangerous. It only gets highlighted when an accident happens in a sauna, but hundreds of times more accidents happen in bathtubs.

You can't imagine how many accidents happen in hot springs.

The fact that Hideki Saijo collapsed in a sauna over a decade ago is still brought up. It's a rare case, yet someone is instilling this atmosphere of danger (laughs).

There's probably an image that saunas are a bad thing.

But today's young people don't push themselves in the sauna room, do they? Not like the old men of the past who would splash their sweat everywhere.

That's right.

The old men who jump into the water do it with a "look how tough I am" expression, though (laughs).

But for young people, being in an enclosed space with 60- or 70-year-old men is probably an extraordinary experience. I think that's a good experience in itself. It's natural to talk to complete strangers across generations. In the sauna room, you might exchange a word, like, "You're sweating a lot today."

I once went to a Korean-style sauna in LA's Koreatown by myself, and nationality doesn't matter at all. Black people, white people, Asians, people with tattoos, children—everyone is naked in the same space. I felt it was a very peaceful space.

All sorts of people can gather naked in such an enclosed space. Being together in a situation where no one has a weapon is a wonderful space, I think.

I really think so. Completely unarmed.

But in movies, the scene where a yakuza gets killed is always in a sauna (laughs). That's not good.

I've been asked if they could use my place for filming (laughs).

The early sauners never said things like, "I won't go unless it's a high-class sauna room." Whether it's a sauna with amazing löyly or an electric one, they would say you can enjoy them all in their own way.

We operators tend to rank them ourselves. However, the enthusiasts enjoy this and that, appreciating them in various ways.

I think so too. Also, if you go every day, your body starts to get used to that facility. It's like your body adapts to the facility (laughs).

That's interesting.

Basically, with a hot spring, you just get in, say, "Ah, that feels good," and you're done, right? But with a sauna, there are so many different ways to enjoy it, and you really use your head. You can actively create your own enjoyment, and there are different saunas in all sorts of places. Not just in Japan, but in Finland, Estonia, all over the world. I don't think there's any other genre of treasure hunting as wonderful as this.

I call myself a "pro sauner," and what I mean by that is I want to be able to make a living solely from saunas. I mean, surfers make a living by surfing, right? I'm aiming to be a person who can make a living by going to saunas (laughs).

That's amazing. Right now, there are a few people who love saunas and work as consultants, which is a great help to us. Until now, we could only hear the opinions of manufacturers and equipment suppliers, but now we can hear the customers' side.

I want to keep trying various things in different ways so as not to bore the young people.

Senpai, saunas are not something you get bored of. Once you realize their goodness, it's something you repeat until you die (laughs).

I hope so (laughs).

That's why high-quality sauna facilities are important to make people realize that goodness in the first place, and I recommend Toho.

Thank you (laughs).

For me, as long as the sauna room, cold bath, and a proper resting space are solid, other things like massage and food are secondary.

The next thing is tent saunas, I think. In other words, combining them with activities. Blending in with nature is at the root of Finnish saunas. I think the way young people embrace this is also wonderful. But there aren't many places to do it in Japan, are there?

That's right. But the other day, we were allowed to do it in the courtyard of the United Nations University in Aoyama. We couldn't provide a pool, of course. Riverbanks are also great.

Tent saunas are fun, aren't they?

It's surprisingly pleasant.

Just being naked in nature is fun, isn't it? (laughs).

No doubt about it.

I think it's a human instinct to get closer to nature.

If you give me a call, I'll be happy to join you anytime (laughs).

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of this publication.