Mount Fuji & Bathouses What Do They Have in Common?

One of the pleasures of going to a sento public bath has traditionally been soaking in the big bathtub and gazing at Mount Fuji painted on the wall across the steam. But such opportunities have dwindled over the years due to a decline in both the number of bathhouses and the painters of the pictures.

So we no longer come across as many renditions of Mount Fuji, a typical motif associated with public baths, as before. Is the combination of bathhouses and the country's highest peak a dying tradition?

At 8 a.m. one day at Hinodeyu, a public bath in Tokyo's Koto Ward, Morio Nakajima, a 64-year-old specializing in penki-e bathhouse background paintings began drawing on the wall over an empty communal bathtub. Nakajima is believed to be one of two remaining painters in Japan who specialize in sento background pictures.

Mount Fuji is a favorite motif of his. He first created a hue by mixing six or seven colors with the sky blue paint that serves as the base. Nakajima used a roller to depict the mountain ridges and a towel soaked with paint to capture the softness of the clouds. A brush was then used to draw the pine branches. There was a particular rhythm in the way he worked.

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