1) Bathing accident as a health problem
Cancer, heart disease and stroke are the main causes of death in Japan. In elderly population pneumonia follows next and the death from accidents come in fifth place.
Traffic accident comes in mind when it's called accident, though in fact more than half of incidents are non-traffic, and out of non-traffic accidents, increasing number of in-house drowning accidents draws attention. Drowning death incidents are categorized as accidents. However incidents caused by cardiac and cerebral attacks occurred during bathing are categorized as the deaths from illnesses. With those incidents counted, the number of deaths during bathing has been suggested to be enormous. When compared even with Western countries, number of drowning accidents in Japan comes in second following Greek with most sea accidents, and it's contrarily with the low ratio of other causes than drowning.
Although it's estimated that the number of sudden death during bathing is increasing, very little has been known. One of the reasons for this limited exposure is because most of the incidents occur when bathing alone with no witnesses to explain the circumstance. Another reason is that cause of death can't be diagnosed as drowning without definite or clear evidence, and diagnosis other than drowning won't surface as incidents related to bathing. Last reason is that autopsy doesn't always clarify cause of death.
Whatever the reasons, 80% of bathing accidents occur among healthy old people who are able to bath themselves, and this notion leads to speculation that they wouldn't have to be mortal accidents if not bathing. Therefore, bathing accidents during aging period are serious health issue.
2) Bathing in Japan
Behind this large number of bathing accidents, Japan's unique social and cultural background come surface. For example, bathing for Western countries is mainly for hygiene purpose whereas in Japan for majority of people bathing serves purpose in deep warming up of body, relax and enjoyable time. It's reported that 100% of people in Japan soak in tub more than three times a week whereas it's only 23% in the U.S.(New York) (Shiseido Co., 1994). Moreover, according to an investigation, average Japanese businessmen defy bathing time as the most relaxing time at home.
On the other hand, in the U.S., many houses have multiple but shower-only bathrooms, and common use may be no tub soaking, just shower in the morning, before going out or before having guests. It's not at all unusual that there are people almost never soak in tub (Tokyo Gas Co.). There is an anecdote from the Crusade era tells how Moslems were shocked and said 'Westerners don't know how to bath nor have idea what hygiene is'. Whereas in Japan, public bath called Sentoh has been familiar place for socialization and information exchange, it shows very different spectrum about bathing from Western culture. So that in terms of mechanism of bathing accidents, it's much further complicated than effect of bathing and influence to physiological response.
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