In an earlier post I wrote it is generally frowned upon to enter a sento or onsen with tattoos exposed. Some of the readers of this blog agreed with this, but others didn’t. And true enough, there is no set rule in the sento etiquette book about tattoos. So is it a preconceived notion that tattoos are out?
Well, yes and no. First, let’s have a look at the yes.
Many family oriented sento, super sento and onsen will explicitly ban people with tattoos from entering. They will have a fairly large sign up at the entrance stating tattoos are not welcome. Gokurakuyu for example does not welcome anybody with tattoos. This is presumably because many families with children visit these places.
So why would children take offense? Well, I’m not sure they would, but as a general rule most members of the Japanese yakuza sport large tattoos on their upper bodies. Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, are generally rough people who might be loud, disregard sento etiquette and set a bad example for children. So a ban on tattoos is an indirect way of telling yakuza they are not welcome.
No let’s have a quick look at the no.
Smaller neighborhood baths generally don’t mind, since the visitors there don’t include many children, and is generally made up of a small core of regular bathers, sometimes including yakuza.
So what about the foreigner with the fashion tat? Know that yakuza tattoos usually have a specific, very Japanese design which make them identifiably yakuza tattoos. If your own tattoo is not modeled after a Japanese gangster tattoo, fellow bathers will recognize you don’t belong to any yakuza clan.
So in conclusion, some baths will specifically state that tattooed people are not welcome, and if that’s the case, live with it. Their house, their rules. If there is no sign banning tattoos at the front door, proceed at your own discretion if you have a tattoo. I know some people don’t feel comfortable exposing their tattoo at a sento and some people don’t care. If you decide to give it a go, try and be polite and cover it a little with a towel if you want, and have a good look at how your fellow bathers react. Sometimes you’ll get stared at, and sometimes you won’t.
I know it’s a bit of a vague issue, so any comments/corrections/additions are welcome.
Tags: etiquette, tattoo, yakuza
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 11:08 am and is filed under The way of the sento . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
I never ran into a sign explicitly forbidding them, but then I didn’t exactly tour the local sento & onsen, so they may have been about. We went to our neighborhood sento and to Komaki Onsen in Misawa regularly, and no one ever made anything out of my tattoo (just one at the time, about 1.5″ in diameter). Of course, with all the US military in the area, it may just have been that they were used to fashion ink.
When some Japanese friends of ours took us to a fancy hotel onsen in the mountains (name long forgotten), I made a point of asking my companion if she thought it was okay. She assured me that it was not likely to be an issue.
When people did stare at me, I usually got the impression that it had more to do with me being foreign and now and then because I am, shall we say, rather more well-endowed than your average Japanese woman.
>> “So why would children take offense? …Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, are generally rough people who might be loud, disregard sento etiquette and set a bad example for children.”
Basically, the tattoo ban goes like this. If you’ve lived in Japan for a while, you know how powerful the rumor mill is in neighborhoods: Many local businesses are made or broken by what stories are told about them in the neighborhood.
It’s not just the fact that “Yakuza are noisy”: I’ve actually bathed with a few in various hole-in-the-wall sento in Gunma and Saitama, and never found them to be anything other than quiet and well-mannered (by themselves, I’ve never been to a “den sento” or anything like that).
But the Yakuza *are* scary to the common folks. So if a rumor develops that “the neighborhood sento allows yakuza” or “I saw some yakuza at the local sento”, then you might as well put a bullet in their business: They’re done, GAME OVER. No normal families will make the sento their local hangout if there’s a chance that there’s yakuza business going on there (and even though there’s not “business” going on, the simple fact of the matter is that saying “I saw some yakuza there once” is enough to drive normal folks away, full stop.
The places I mentioned above that are hole-in-the-wall, they became that way because of poor management and the like, but also because they didn’t specifically forbid “anyone with a tattoo”, one yakuza dude showed up once, the rumor mill spread, and the only customers that use them now are either hardcore locals, people who don’t have families or don’t care about the rumor mill (single guys), old people who live nearby, or clueless outsiders (see: Goshiki Onsen in Isesaki).
BTW, if you head to Gunma/Maebashi, check out “Shichifuku no Yuu” right down the road from the huge Movix cineplex: A modern sento, not super high-tech, but lots of awesome baths, and most of them at reasonable (read: Enjoyable) temperatures.
Ah, here’s the website for the aforementioned Shichifuku no Yu:
http://www.shichifukunoyu.jp/maebashi/index.html
It’s inexpensive and incredible. Only downside is that, being in Gunma, you need a car to get there.
Cool blog, BTW. I was liked here by Japundit.
Kitsuki, you’re right, the size of the tattoo is part of how it’s received, plus yeah, we get stared at just for being foreign
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Andy, interesting point you make there. I hadn’t thought about the bad-for-business side of the story, but that’s a nice addition. Thanks! And if I’m ever in the area I’ll take you up on your recommendation.
[...] little while ago I briefly touched upon the topic of yakuza in the sento when I wrote about tattoos in the sento. When I was at my local sento last night for my weekly soak I was briefly eye-balled by a lone [...]