Tōji-ya 湯治屋 · Japanese Bath Minerals and Onsen Soaks, UK

Tōji (湯治) is the old Japanese practice of going to the hot springs to recover. Not for an afternoon, but for a stretch of days, doing very little. It is more than a thousand years old, and it rests on an idea Britain has largely mislaid: that recovery is something you repeat, not something you achieve.

Tōji-ya is a curated house for that practice, brought home. We source only in Japan, one maker at a time: bath minerals and herbal baths, the summer cooling rituals that answer them, incense and candles, cloth woven for water, and evening tea. No optimising, no tracking, nothing to be got better at. A bath, a scent, a towel, a cup, and an evening that asks nothing of you.

Inside the house

Soak

Tōji · 湯治 +

Hot · Atsu 熱

The practice took two forms: mineral waters from the hot springs, and herbal baths drawn from medicinal plants. We take them as Japan makes them.

The Waters

Where we can, our soaks carry yunohana, the mineral bloom formed by hot-spring water, gathered or drawn from the place where it rises.

Chloride塩化物The salt water. Japan knows it as the water whose warmth stays with you.
Alkalineアルカリ性The silky water. Japan calls it bijin-no-yu, the water of beauty. Soft on the hand before it is anything else.
Carbonated炭酸Fine bubbles that gather on the skin, made to recreate the springs that rise already sparkling.

The Herbal Bath

Yakusō-yu薬草湯Medicinal plants steeped in the bath, as old as the springs and practised alongside them. Whole herbs, nothing else.

The waters, the herbal bath and the cooling bath, explained: the Japanese bath.

Cool · Suzumi 涼み

The cooling bath. Japan's answer to a warm evening, for a warming Britain.

The cool at the centre of it is hakka (薄荷), Japanese mint, more refreshing on the skin than the Western kind. Traditionally grown across the length of the country, and now kept alive by a few growers who never let the fields go.

Mizu水The cool bath. A soak for hot weather, leaving the skin cool as you step out into the evening.

And, in season, the fūrin (風鈴): the summer wind chime, hung where a passing breeze can be heard as well as felt.

Beside the bath

Two soaks that are not waters, but belong to the same bath.

Nuka糠A rice-bran bag pressed in the water. The Japanese answer to exfoliation: it softens rather than scrubs.
Sleep soakA wind-down formulation for the last bath of the day.

Burn

Kaori · 香り +

Scent and light, best enjoyed during and after the bath.

Kōdō香道"The way of fragrance." Incense as a means to pause and find a moment of serenity in something fleeting.
Warosoku和蝋燭The Japanese plant-wax candle, hand-made and hollow-cored, with a taller and more restless flame than a Western candle.

Afterglow

Furo agari · 風呂上がり +

The quiet half-hour that the bath was for.

WrapTowels from Imabari, a hundred-and-thirty-year towel region with an absorbency standard stricter than anywhere else, alongside light open-weave tenugui cloth that dries in minutes.
SipRoasted hojicha and kyōbancha from Kyoto. Japan's after-dinner teas, and low in caffeine.

Journal

· +

Writing from the road: the makers we meet, the towns the waters come from, and the case for doing less.

LatestWhy a Restaurateur Went Looking for a Bath

Every essay at tojiya.substack.com.