Japanese Bathhouse

This woodblock print from about 1787 is by the Japanese artist Torii Kiyonaga, and it’s one of the most elegant examples of the distinct art from the Edo period in Japan, a time when the country’s artistic creativity generated works admired both at home and by Europeans.

“Interior of a bathhouse” shows several women in the process of bathing at a communal bathhouse — a common practice at the time. Some of the women are dressed, others nude, and some are halfway in between. You can see a woman bathing an infant in the foreground, and another washing her genitalia behind a screen. Open panels on the left wall reveal the men’s bathing area adjacent.

This woodblock style of print falls into the “Ukiyo-e” style, deriving from syllables meaning “sadness of life” with a double entendre “floating life”: the former emphasized a Buddhist idea of the transitory nature of all things, but the latter intimated that an approach to life might be to gently embrace fleeting pleasure. And this artistic style appealed to the rising numbers of urbanite wealthy — Ukiyo-e art regularly showed actors from the Kabuki theater, geisha courtesans, and warriors. But scenes from nature were also common (such as the famous “The Great Wave” by Katsushika Hokusai).

A subset of the Ukiyo-e genre were “Shunga” illustrations — erotica that were owned by women and men of various social classes and which Europeans initially reacted against in a horrified fashion.

“Interior of a bathhouse” shows a relatable and intimate scene, and although it features nakedness, was not a really bold “Shunga”. Nudity did not have the same taboo in Japan that it did in Europe at the time. The artist Edgar Degas obtained this woodcut. Perhaps he was enchanted with the candidness of the subject, as well as by the meshing of vertical and horizontal lines of the buildings with the curved lines of the female figures. Many of his own works exhibited these features.

The Ukiyo-e style eventually influenced many Western artists of the time.