Tokyo has lost 84% of its sentō since 1968. The rest are getting busier.

Where Tokyo’s 417 sentō were at the end of 2025

Each bank of lockers is one area, placed roughly where it sits, the Tama cities to the west: a door for every bathhouse it had at the end of 2016, blue with its key tag for each still counted at the end of 2025. All 23 wards have fewer than in 2016, and no area has more. Edogawa lost 16; Shibuya, Chiyoda and Minato lost one each. Nine cities have none, and Kiyose, Kodaira and Inagi lost their last. Towns, villages and the islands are not in the source.

The most a bath may cost, and what it costs to run

The governor caps what a Tokyo sentō may charge under the 物価統制令, the Price Control Order; a bathhouse may charge less, never more. The cap has gone from 280円 (1988) to 600円 (August 2026). Each dot is the city’s estimate of what an adult bath costs to provide, from its accounting survey of bathhouses. In all 22 years it made one since 2004, the estimate was above the cap in force, by 2円 to 87円.

All 9 revisions since 2004 set the new cap below that year’s estimate; August 2026 came closest, 600円 against 603円. Its +50円 was the largest single step since at least 1988.

In minutes of Tokyo’s minimum wage, an adult bath cost 33 in 1988, 36 at its peak in 2006, and about 28 now (600円 at 1,280円 an hour). The cap is a ceiling, not what every bathhouse charges.

公衆浴場の入浴料金は、その上限を統制額として、知事が指定しています。 The governor sets the upper limit of a public bath’s fare, the controlled price. (東京くらしWEB). Wage: 東京労働局「東京都最低賃金金額改正一覧」, and for 2026 its press release.

The question the housing survey stopped asking

Each grid is 100 Tokyo homes; a filled house has a bath of its own. The figures are the national housing survey’s (住宅・土地統計調査), as the council’s table gives them, one a decade: 42.2% in 1968, 97.6% in 2008.

平成２５年以降は自家風呂の有無についての調査は行われていない。 From 2013 on, the survey has not asked whether a home has its own bath. (注3, the council’s table)

The city’s explanation for the falling count, in its words: 「自家風呂保有者の増加に伴う公衆浴場利用者の減少等により転廃業が続出し、著しく減少してきています。」 (As more households came to own a bath, fewer people used the public baths, among other reasons; one bathhouse after another closed or turned to other business, and the number has fallen sharply.) (東京くらしWEB「東京の公衆浴場の現況」)

Japan’s other public baths passed its sentō in 1989

Every licensed public bath in Japan, 1977 to FY2021: each chimney (煙突) is 1,000 sentō, each steam icon 1,000 other public baths (saunas, super-sentō and spa complexes among them), cut to the exact fraction. The total was 25,358 in 1977, peaked at 28,792 in FY2007 and fell to 23,780. In FY2021, 3,120 of 23,780 were sentō: 13%, fewer than 1 in 7.

Licensed facilities, from 厚生労働省 衛生行政報告例 (付表F01): calendar years through 1996, fiscal year-end from 1997; FY2010 omits parts of Miyagi and Fukushima after the earthquake. 全浴連, the bathhouse trade federation, counts only its members: 1,493 sentō in April 2026, against 17,999 in 1968. Neither series uses Tokyo’s definition, so neither is charted against it.