Japan has nearly 30,000 hot springs and a culture of public bathing. An Israeli Americanarchitect, Yuval Zohar, has developed ...

This undated photo provided by Stéphanie Crohin shows traditional baths and murals in Kasuga onsen, or hot spring bath, in Matsuzaka, Mie prefecture, Japan. Japan is proud of its bathing traditions.

On a recent concert tour in Japan, I had the chance to visit several thermal baths and to chat with people about the tradition of bathing. I was fascinated by their differences with American spas.

In Japan, bathing in the nude with strangers is just a regular part of onsen culture. But for many foreign visitors, taking that first plunge can be intimidating.

The Japanese police have arrested 17 men suspected of photographing and filming more than 10,000 women who were bathing in hot springs. Between December 2021 and February, 16 more men were arrested, ...

An incident in which a girl in her early teens was sexually assaulted at a public bathhouse in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, has brought renewed ...

Together, these discoveries suggest that spending time in forests — a practice known in Japan as “Shinrinyoku” or forest bathing — does more than refresh the mind. It may also strengthen the immune ...

Forget the ocean. In Ibusuki, a beachside city on Kyushu Island in Japan’s subtropical south, it’s all about the sand. Not the dark color of the sandy granules or even the length or width of the ...

Forest bathing emerged in Japan in the 1980s as a physiological and psychological exercise called shinrin-yoku, meaning “forest bathing” or “taking in the forest atmosphere.” Now this type of walking ...