There is in Japan no city—hardly a hamlet—that has not its public baths. Some of these places are reserved for the wealthy, but in most of these bathhouses the greatest democracy prevails. Men and women who have spent the day at toil repair to the bathhouse. A slight amount of deference to Western ideas has resulted in the separating of the sexes. From the street a room like a long hall is entered. The visitor steps in and finds that the bathing is being all done at the further end of this hall. The sexes are separated by a partition in the area of the overhead showers, but both men and women are visible to the instepping visitor. Neither the men nor the women resent observation. They chatter and laugh like children, spend some twenty minutes under the dripping water, then dress themselves to go out, clean and wholesome, for the evening's few pleasures. While hot water is provided at these public baths, cold water is far more in demand.
It is worth the while of the visitor to one of these Japanese public baths to go close to the bathers and to study the anatomy of these people. In the company of a woman doctor
