system, saying that the bathers put on their dirty clothes when they have dried themselves. True, the Japanese of the old school have nothing so perfect as our system of daily renovated linen. But as the bodies even of the men of the lowest class are constantly washed and scrubbed, it is hardly to be supposed that their garments, though perhaps dusty outside, can be very dirty within. A Japanese crowd is the sweetest in the world. The charm of the Japanese system of hot bathing is proved by the fact that almost all the foreigners resident in the country adopt it. There seems, too, to be something in the climate which renders hot baths healthier than cold. By persisting in the use of cold water one man gets rheumatism, a second gets fever, a third a never-ending continuance of colds and coughs. So nearly all end by coming round to the Japanese plan, the chief foreign contribution to its improvement being the use of a separate bath by each person. In a Japanese family the same bath does for all the members; and as man is the nobler sex, the gentlemen usually take it first, in the order of their age or dignity, the ladies afterwards, and then the younger children, the servants enjoying it last at a late hour of the evening, if they be not sent to a public bath-house instead. It must be understood that each bather first cleans himself outside the bath by ladling water over his body. Nowadays soap, too, is much used. The original national cleanser was the bran bag (nuka-bukuro), made by sewing a handful of bran into a small piece of linen, which furnishes a deliciously soft washing material. Thus each one enters the bath already clean, to enjoy the luxury of a good boiling.
The national passion for bathing leads all classes to make extensive use of the hot mineral springs in which their volcano-studded land abounds. Sometimes they carry their enjoyment of this simple luxury to an almost incredible extreme. At Kawarayu, a tiny spa not far from Ikao in the province of Jōshū—one of those places, of which there are many in Japan, which look as if they were at the very end of the world, so steep are the mountains shutting them in on every side the bathers stay in the
