Daily hygienic practices are based on one of the most fundamental concepts in any culture: what is clean and what is dirty. In so-called modern societies, where the knowledge of biomedicine has been widely disseminated to the public, we often assume that all hygienic concepts are based on the germ theory. This chapter challenges that assumption by examining the hygienic practices of contemporary urban Japanese.

Lack of detailed description of daily hygiene is common in publications on Japanese culture and society. There are numerous publications, many in Japanese and some in English, describing Japanese concepts of purity and impurity. However, they discuss these concepts primarily within the framework of religious notions in Shinto and Buddhism. Furthermore, these concepts are often seen as remnants of the past, and are not viewed as a part of the health-seeking behavior of contemporary Japanese.

Daily hygiene in contemporary Japan

Daily hygiene and classification of space

Some of the most important early socialization training for Japanese children is to take their shoes off and wash their hands, and, in some families gargle, when they come into the house from outside. The Japanese explain this custom by stating that one gets dirty from germs outside; one takes off one's shoes so that unclean dirt from outside does not get tracked into the clean inside. Similarly, one must wash one's hands and gargle to get rid of germs on the hands and in the throat. The Japanese explain these customs in terms of germs (baikin – a term of recent origin, after the introduction of the germ theory from the West); some even have a visual image of enlarged bacteria, often shown to school-children in films.