Japanese bathhouses face closure as Iran conflict drives up oil prices

9 articles · Updated · The New York Times · May 2

In Nagano, 87-year-old Yoshiko Kodama says her family's 138-year-old sento uses up to 2,000 litres of heavy oil a month and may have to shut.
The price surge is hitting bathhouses already struggling to stay afloat, raising costs for heating water at a time when many operators face weak finances and few successors.
Sento, long a social fixture in Japan, have also been squeezed by private home baths and competition from modern spas, making them vulnerable to global energy shocks.

With oil prices soaring and the Strait of Hormuz closed, can Japan's centuries-old sento tradition survive, or is this the end of an era?

Could this unprecedented energy crisis push Japan to accelerate its transition to alternative energy and new ways of preserving cultural heritage?