The unwelcome behaviour of some male customers is putting women off visits to hot springs, where both sexes have mingled for years
Photograph: Bohistock/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Bohistock/Getty ImagesThe rattle of someone sliding open the changing room door is the cue to execute a discreet turn of the head, gaze firmly directed at the steam rising towards the bathhouse’s intricate wooden rafters.
Their lurking presence is making more women reluctant to bathe with men – even family members – and is forcing the industry and its government regulators to devise new ways to protect konyoku culture. Some have set up partitions so that, while men may be sharing the same water as their female counterparts, voyeurism is impossible.
Other hot springs have followed suit, with one proprietor who recently introduced a clothing rule on a trial basis suggesting the change would become permanent since it had clearly deterred bathers with “perverse motives”. Another onsen in the south-west of the country saw the number of female bathers rise from 10% to 80% after it made covering up compulsory.
But official restlessness persisted: Tokyo banned konyoku among people aged over 10 in 1964 – the year it hosted the summer Olympics – and reduced the maximum age to seven in the 1990s.
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