Tachikawa Sento Guide: Public Baths, Their History and Bath Etiquette

Tachikawa still has three sento, more than Hachioji. A walk through their history: a 6-yen bath now 600 yen, a 1946 decree, and how to bathe like a local.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

10 October is Sento Day in Japan. A sento (銭湯) is a neighbourhood public bathhouse, and the date is a pun: in Japanese, 10 can be read to and 1,000 sen, so “10-10” sounds like sen-to. Even the web address of the Tokyo Sento Association, the bathhouse owners’ trade body, has “1010” in it. I know of no other industry that takes its puns this seriously.

On Sento Day, I decided to count the sento of Tachikawa (立川).

According to a Tokyo Metropolitan Government document, at the end of December 2025 Tachikawa City had three public baths, in other words three sento. Not many, you might think. But in the same table, neighbouring Hachioji has two, and Ome, Kodaira and Hino have none. Among the cities of Tama, the western half of Tokyo beyond the 23 central wards, Tachikawa is one of the better-stocked towns for bathhouses.

In a town where department stores and a monorail line the station front, more old-style bathhouses survive than in other Tama cities. Even among people who live in Tachikawa, few probably know it. Why did the baths survive here? With that question in mind, I set off to trace the history of the steam.

How many sento does Tachikawa have? Three, by the official lists

Let me begin by counting.

Open the sento map published by the Tokyo Sento Association and select “Tachikawa City,” and three entries come up: Mihoyu (美保湯) in Hagoromocho, Matsumiyu (松見湯), also in Hagoromocho, and Tachikawa Yuyashiki Ume no Yu (立川湯屋敷 梅の湯, “Tachikawa Bathhouse Mansion: Plum Bath”) in Takamatsucho. Mihoyu is marked “temporarily closed.” The nearest station for Mihoyu and Matsumiyu is Nishi-Kunitachi on the JR Nambu Line; for Ume no Yu it is Tachikawa on the Chuo Line.

On the association’s map, each sento has an ohenro number, a serial number for people making a “pilgrimage” round Tokyo’s bathhouses (the word borrows from the famous 88-temple pilgrimage of Shikoku). In the Tachikawa column, Ume no Yu is No. 1, Mihoyu No. 3 and Matsumiyu No. 4.

So where did No. 2 go?

The association’s published list of closures had the answer. In the list of sento that closed after the 2017 edition of its map was issued, there is Tachikawa No. 2: Takasagoyu (高砂湯). Its address was in Shibasakicho 2-chome, about ten minutes’ walk from the station’s South Exit. A website that collects records of saunas notes that it closed at the end of June 2023.

Incidentally, search the same closure lists for “Tachikawa” and one more comes up: Taishoyu in Tachikawa, Sumida Ward. At the far eastern edge of Tokyo there is a neighbourhood also called Tachikawa. I had set out to research Tachikawa’s baths and ended up learning about the closure of a bathhouse on the far side of the Sumida River. Searching by place name sometimes sends you on unexpected detours.

Back to the metropolitan documents. In the table for the end of December 2015, Tachikawa had four sento. Down one in ten years, to three. Still more than Hachioji.

Across Tokyo as a whole, the decline is far steeper. According to the metropolitan documents, Tokyo had the most sento in 1968, with 2,687, the post-war peak. By 2025 there were 417. Take 1968 as 100 and the index has fallen to 15.5. In Tama’s cities alone, 279 have become 35. Only about one in eight remains.

Three of those 35 are in Tachikawa. Roughly one in every twelve sento in Tama, then, is a Tachikawa bath.

Having finished counting, the next question bubbles up. With so few sento left, who decides what a bath costs? When I looked into it, the answer turned out to lie in an unexpectedly old law.

From 6 yen to 600: a post-war imperial decree still sets the price of a bath

The Tokyo Sento Association publishes a table of how bath prices in Tokyo have changed. The first line is 5 March 1948: adults 6 yen, older children 4 yen, young children 2 yen.

The last line is 1 August 2026: adults 600 yen.

Exactly 100 times. In 78 years, the price gained two zeros.

Follow the table down and the texture of daily life in the Showa era (1926–1989) rises up from behind the numbers. By August 1948 the price was already 10 yen. In 1965 it was 28 yen; in 1975, 100 yen. Between 1974 and 1975 it went from 75 yen to 100, a rise of more than 30 per cent in a single year. Presumably the price rises of the oil-crisis years.

The table has one more column you never see today: hair washing. In 1948, on top of the adult bath fee, washing your hair cost 6 yen. The same as the bath itself. It later became 10 yen, fell to 5 yen from 1965, and from 1 May 1970 was no longer charged, the association explains.

A separate charge to wash your hair. To young people today it might sound like a joke. But at a Showa sento it was perfectly normal. In every town there must have been people at the bandai, the raised attendant’s booth at the entrance, adding the hair-washing fee to their bath money.

So who sets this price? The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s website explains it this way. Public bath prices are set under the Price Control Ordinance: each prefectural governor designates an upper limit, called the “controlled price.” Tokyo decides it after auditing the accounts of public baths and hearing the views of the parties concerned at the Tokyo Public Bath Measures Council. According to the association, the council calculates costs from the bathhouses’ financial statements and the governor issues a public notice. The price of a bath is not decided by the bathhouse owner’s mood. It is decided by the ledgers.

The Price Control Ordinance. According to the encyclopedia, it is an imperial decree issued in March 1946 to curb the inflation that followed the end of the war. A relic of an era when the state set the price of everything, from food to clothing. As the economy recovered, one item after another was released from control: rice prices in 1972, industrial alcohol in 2001. And since 2002, the encyclopedia says, only public bath prices have remained.

In other words, the only thing in Japan today whose price is still set under a decree issued just after the war is the water in a sento.

Incidentally, the association sells a shared bath ticket valid at any sento in Tokyo, in books of ten for adults at 5,400 yen. That is 540 yen a visit. A coupon book that slips just under the decree-set ceiling. As thrift tips for sento lovers go, it is surely the most legal one there is.

Each time we take a bath, we pay 600 yen in obedience to a law of 1946. Behind the attendant’s counter sits not only the bathhouse owner, but, quietly, the memory of the post-war economy.

If these baths were so carefully protected by public hands, why did so many disappear? The answer was inside the homes of the Showa era.

Tachikawa’s sento in numbers

• 3 — Sento in Tachikawa City (end of December 2025, metropolitan figures). Neighbouring Hachioji has 2. Considering the difference in population, Tachikawa is putting up a decent fight.
• 2,687 — Sento in Tokyo in 1968, the post-war peak.
• 417 — Sento in Tokyo at the end of 2025. In 57 years, down to roughly one sixth.
• 6 → 600 — The adult bath fee in yen, in 1948 and in 2026. Exactly 100 times. My salary, sadly, has not done the same.
• 42.2 — The percentage of Tokyo households with a bath at home in 1968. More than half of homes had none.
• 10,000 — Manga volumes in Ume no Yu’s rest room (according to the association’s description). You will not finish them before you cool down.

A traveller’s quiz

At a Showa-era Tokyo sento, what did you pay for separately from the bath fee?

1. Soap
2. Hair washing
3. A bottle of milk after the bath

The answer comes near the end of this article.

But the price of a bath alone does not show you the true face of Tachikawa’s sento. Next, I want to trace the Showa-era life that lay beyond the bathhouse curtains.

When homes had no bath: life and the Showa-era sento

Alongside the number of sento, the metropolitan documents give one more figure: the rate of households with their own bath. Based on the national Housing and Land Survey, in 1968 the figure for Tokyo was 42.2 per cent. Fewer than half of households had a bath at home. It then rose to 64.7 per cent in 1978, 83.1 per cent in 1988, 94.1 per cent in 1998 and 97.6 per cent in 2008.

The more homes got baths, the fewer sento there were. The two sets of numbers are almost mirror images.

The same document also estimates the number of daily users per sento. In 1968, 530 people. By 2008, down to 124. I try to picture 530 people passing through one bath. At dusk the changing room must have been as crowded as a station platform.

For the town of Tachikawa, the home bath is also a story of water mains and sewers. According to the city’s chronology, Tachikawa began its waterworks in 1951 and its sewerage system in 1961. Only once water came from the tap and used water could be drained away could people put a bathtub in the house. Until then, for the people of Tachikawa, soaking in hot water meant going to the sento.

Tokyo’s sento are old to begin with. According to the association, records say the first sento in Edo (the old name for Tokyo) was a bathhouse built in 1591 by a man named Yoichi from Ise, beside Zenigame Bridge, which stood near today’s Tokiwa Bridge. That was the year after Tokugawa Ieyasu, the future shogun, entered Edo. By the early 17th century, it was said that every neighbourhood had its bath. A bathing culture that had lasted more than 400 years thinned out suddenly in a few decades in the second half of the Showa era.

Some Showa-era sento equipment is still with us. The yellow plastic bath pail, Kerorin. According to the association, these pails, carrying an advertisement for a painkiller, went on sale around 1965; easy to use, and cheaper to buy because of the advertising, they spread rapidly through the sento. Before that, wooden pails were the norm. If you pick up a pail at a Tachikawa bath, peek at the bottom. An advertisement from 1965 may still be on duty.

The Mount Fuji on the wall was the face of the Showa sento, too. According to the association, the Mount Fuji scenes and other murals in Tokyo’s sento are now painted by only a handful of artists. They finish one of those huge walls in about five hours before opening time. But bathhouses that have been renovated rarely keep their murals. On the association’s map, Mihoyu and Matsumiyu in Tachikawa are marked with the icon for “paint murals.” Tachikawa’s bath walls, it seems, still have pictures on them.

The names are fun too. When the association counted the names of Tokyo’s sento in 2015, first place went to “Matsu no Yu” (Pine Bath) with 17, and second to “Sakaeyu” (Prosperity Bath) and “Kotobukiyu” (Longevity Bath) with 13 each. Auspicious names stand out, such as pine, bamboo and plum, or crane and tortoise. Line up Tachikawa’s bath names. Matsumiyu (Pine-Viewing Bath), Ume no Yu (Plum Bath). And the closed Takasagoyu: Takasago is also the title of a Noh chant sung at weddings. Tachikawa’s bathhouse owners did not forget to court good luck. Still, there is no Matsu no Yu itself in Tachikawa. There is a bath for looking at pines, but no Pine Bath.

Back then, the sento stood in for the bath at home. At dusk, people carrying pails headed for the bathhouse, left their coins at the counter and added the 5 yen for washing their hair. Today, people who come to Tachikawa’s sento come not because they have no bath at home, but for what the bath at home can’t give them. A big tub, a cold plunge, an open-air bath, and the faint embarrassment of soaking in the same water as strangers.

How did the bathhouses survive that change? When I traced the story of Tachikawa’s oldest bath, I came across a curious coincidence.