This project, titled Satabi: Japanese Sauna Pilgrimages to Europe and Beyond, investigated Japan’s contemporary sauna boom—particularly among younger generations—through the lens of pilgrimage, communitas, and global cultural exchange. Drawing on Victor Turner’s anthropological theories, the study traced the transnational movement of sauna knowledge and practice from Europe to Japan and the ways in which these practices are hybridized within Japan’s longstanding bathing traditions.

Fieldwork was conducted in online forums and with textual analysis for overseas topics and domestically at historical bath sites, including the stone-masonry saunas of Yamaguchi Prefecture and the Tsukahara karafuro in Kagawa. These sites provided critical insight into the religious, medicinal, and communal uses of bathing in Japan’s early modern period, helping to situate the current boom in a broader historical continuum. Interviews and consultations were held with contemporary sauna designers, aufguss practitioners, and cultural critics across Japan to explore how European rituals such as German aufguss and Finnish löyly are adapted and reimagined in Japanese contexts.

The research considered the post-COVID rise in wellness tourism, the cultural idealization of Finland as the “happiest country,” and the increasingly internationalized aesthetics of Japanese saunas. Simultaneously, it addressed critical issues such as cultural appropriation, embodied gendered experiences, and nationalism embedded in purification rituals. These were explored not only through scholarly methods but also through collaborations with artists, sauna builders, and scent-makers, as well as through media coverage and popular publications that have fueled public discourse on saunas in Japan.

While preliminary in scope due to limited funding, this research laid vital groundwork for comparative international fieldwork to be conducted in Finland in Academic Year 2026. It will directly contribute to a forthcoming academic monograph and related curatorial projects. Ultimately, Satabi sheds light on how the global circulation of ritual bathing practices reflects shifting desires for reconnection, healing, and community in a digitized, climate-fragile, and postmodern world.