/ 10 September 2003

Japanese spa owners in hot water

A Japanese government watchdog has warned the owners of hot springs resorts nationwide to come clean on the benefits of their baths, claiming advertisements exaggerating quality and healthiness are rampant.

Japan’s Fair Trade Commission found that of 217 spas claiming in their brochures or on Internet homepages to use ”100% natural” hot spring waters, 70% were fudging the truth, commission official Seiji Watanabe said on Tuesday.

In reality, he said, many of the inns artificially heated spring water, mixed it with outside water sources, or pumped it in from a location off the inns’ premises. Only about one-third of the nation’s 22 000 hot springs inns are believed to use pure, undiluted water from its natural source.

”There are almost no real hot springs left,” he said.

Watanabe said the commission is considering a crackdown on misleading claims, either through prosecution or by releasing violators’ names to the media.

Hot springs resorts are immensely popular in Japan, drawing millions of bathers each year.

Along with the claims of the purity of their waters, many inns also boast a long list of medicinal benefits that bathers can reap from repeated dips. The claims range from lowering blood pressure to curing all kinds of skin ailments.

But health problems have also been caused by visits to the spas.

Last summer, an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease at a new hot-spring resort in southern Japan killed six people and infected hundreds of others who shared the spa’s bubbling waters.

Watanabe said other departments of the government are looking into exaggerated health claims and health-code violations.

But, from the purity perspective, he said some of the spas dilute their baths with so much water from the public system that whatever benefit the original source springs might have had is erased.

Toru Terada, managing director of the non-profit Japan Spa Association, said spas are considering a purity ranking system, which would be released to the public. — Sapa-AP