That ' s how I play pip and people love it <| sep |> I don ' t know nearly as much about Japanese hygiene history as I do European , sadly . I do know a lot did revolve around different styles of bath houses and bathing would have been much more common for them . Bath houses existed in Europe as well , though they were not as plentiful in most areas and in many places became escapes for the wealthy Bath , England rather than places for everyone . There are inherent issues with this system of cleaning , as even Samuel Pepys noted in his late 17 th century diary , since you have multiple people sharing one area of water . From what I can find it ' s safe to say that the Japanese in this time would have considered cleanliness extremely important and had a version that was more closely aligned with our modern ideas of hygiene heavy use of water , etc . Guess I ' ll have to put a few more books on my holiday reading list now !