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O-yudono and steam baths?
Topic Started: Oct 6 2015, 11:57 PM (742 Views)
hashiba_hideyoshi
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Togishi
Recently I came across this picture in Panoramio and whoever posted it had labelled it "O-yudono, a steam bath Feudal lord used". Trying to find out more about this thing isn't working so well, because when I try to search for "O-yudono", most of the hits that showed up on Google described it as "the Emperor's bathroom" or something similar. If not, then it's various tourism guides for onsen in Mt. Yudono. Japanese dictionaries said that even as a "bathing place" it's not just a regular bathroom, and can also refer to purification rituals for new years or childbirth. And this Japanese architecture website also said in Edo era it refers to a place where water is boiled for tea, but yeah...

Anyways, I'm trying to find out about more about O-yudono as a steam bath, in particular (unless it turns out its name isn't O-yudono after all). Since in the Panoramio thing it says it belonged to a feudal lord, and according to SA's wiki, Hideyoshi had a steam bath in Jurakudai, I'm trying to find what it'd be used for. Purification rituals? For health/medication purposes? For fun? Socializing?

Aside from the Panoramio picture, the only other place where I can find any reference to O-yudono being a steam bath is a Tumblr post where the O-yudono is depicted in manga as something that really looked like modern-day sauna.
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Toranosuke
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Tosa no kami
Based on the characters (kanji) alone, Oyudono 御湯殿 seems to be a fairly generic term. "O" is just an honorific, elevating the word but essentially not contributing to the meaning. "Yu" means hot water, or a bath. And "dono" most literally means a palace, or a lord. So, on the surface at least it doesn't seem a particularly specific/specialized term.

That said the only time I've ever seen the term actually in use was at the former Hotta clan mansion, in Sakura, Chiba, and that /was/ constructed for the use of the Emperor. So... I'm not sure. In that particular case, it was not an immersion bath - not a tub that you fill with water, and then sit in - but rather a relatively waterproof room, in which the bather simply bathed with water being sprayed or poured over the body.

(See a gallery label from the Hotta mansion here)
上り口説 Nubui Kuduchi – Musings on the arts of Japan and beyond
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