Deep Contrasts
As you step off the train at Yugawara, a relatively short journey ninety kilometres southwest of Tokyo, the air and the green invite a sense of arrival – not just in a new place but, after leaving the city, of arrival into the body.
The thrill and allure of deep contrasts is one of Japan’s striking hallmarks. Even within a city these polarities exist. In Tokyo, it’s the epic contrast of ancient temples tucked into gardens surrounded by roads and skyscrapers, or in the act of leaving the fast-paced street for the placid murmurs of the public bathhouse.
The change is perhaps most deeply felt when leaving the city. Yugawara is a well-known onsen town, referring to the many hot spring bath houses dotted throughout the hills. Here, before even stepping into the waters of a hot spring, the senses are bathed in green: the hills, the moss-covered statues leading to the Fudo Waterfalls. Even the air feels coloured with a vibrant and fresh greenery. Our bodies feel these contrasts. We become accustomed to the fast pace and sensory input of a city, from rush hour in the subway to the dizzying lights and evening crowds. We can find this energising, to an extent, associating pace with productivity.
Conversely, we tend to associate rest with ‘getting away’, with leaving places and stopping activities. We tend to amplify these differences in daily life: either we are resting or we are working. We see rest as the “off ” time, and getting away as the moment to stop. It is interesting to interrogate these associations, and consider if there is a way to embrace and incorporate contrast in our lives – learning from a landscape like Japan that we might be able to find idleness even within a city, and equally that pursuing idleness – whether at home or through travel – is a worthy and essential companion to activity.
When we think of our bodies in cities, we tend to think of disconnection – from environment, seasonality, sensation. In winter, our bodies are wrapped in layers; they can be sore or hunched at desks, sometimes in overheated rooms that disrupt our relationship to nature, to the weather. Equally in summer, when we are in air-conditioned spaces, the heat can feel oppressive when amplified by the urban jungle. In cities, it seems that we tend to avoid the weather, and our bodies get used to this. We recoil from cold or heat or wind. When we’re disconnected from our bodies in this way, we tend to channel our focus into the everyday occupations of work, and tasks and screens.
This reality has been recognised in Japan in the concept of Shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing”, which refers to taking in the atmosphere of a forest. While it has become something of a quotable trend in western media, the fact that it is a named concept suggests a deep need to connect or reconnect with the experience of our bodies in nature.
So much so that doctors in Japan prescribe shinrin-yoku as a treatment forstress, hypertension and other health conditions. While it sounds like anancient practice, the concept was publicised during Japan’s economic andmanufacturing boom of the 1980s as a way to encourage a healthier worklife balance. Being in Japan and feeling its epic contrasts, this makes sense. As well as peaceful onsen towns, Japan is also known for its perpetual productivity and a work culture that can lead to burnout and disillusionment.
Yet it’s possible to find and cultivate rest within the city environment, to pursue it as a necessary accompaniment to work. In the cities and suburbs of Japan, bathing culture exists in the sento, the public bathhouse. Where an onsen uses mineral-rich water from hot springs, The sento generally uses heated water, as found in a public pool. Nevertheless, the sento offers an opportunity for city and suburban dwellers to take part in the culture of public bathing, to inhabit the body amid a work life often tied to a screen or desk. When staying in Japan with a local family, it’s not uncommon to be taken to the local sento in the evening. Neatly tiled with wall murals of snow-capped mountains, there is often an aged charm to the suburban sento. After a long day of travelling, the experience of coming together and bathing is slowing, soothing, grounding.
The wall murals of the urban sento gesture to the hot spring towns and villages for which Japan’s countryside is renowned. Of course, those epic locations are most associated with rest and relaxation – and rightly so, they have a magical tranquility about them. Hakone, just north-east of Lake Ashi, is one such area known for its hot spring resorts and traditional ryokan guest houses. The region was once a key rest stop along the Tokaido Highway during the Edo period, in the seventeenth century. Wrapped in a robe, feet on the tatami mat of a sparse, wood-lined guesthouse room, it’s possible to imagine the past of these sites of rest on an ancient path. Gaining perspective from this past, we can see how rest and activity were deeply entwined – quite literally, with the onsen towns on the main- trade and travel routes. In our modern day equivalent, we might consider that idleness is a worthy pursuit rather than something “earned” or “taken” after a period of overwork or burnout.
There is something about water and landscape that brings us back to our bodies, and experiencing the wild divergence of concrete jungle to ancient forest in japan makes this so apparent.
Yes, we’re cold, but we embrace it for that breathtaking walk and view. Yes, it feels stifling and oppressively hot, but our muscles finally loosen and we let ourselves be drawn to sources of water. When we connect with nature, with water, with landscape, we – and therefore our bodies – find a peace with elements so often avoided. Nowhere is this more apparent than Okuhida Onsen Villages, where bathers – tourists, local families, older couples – converge to bathe outside in the snow. Stepping outside into the freezing air, there’s a pleasant sense of shock as we embrace the contrasting temperatures. We feel it again when stepping into the hot, steaming mountain water, as though we're welcomed back into our bodies.
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