The Big Bath House by Kyo Maclear (review)

This gently celebratory second-person narration chronicles a girl’s visit to her beloved grandmother in Japan, highlighted by an outing, along with aunties and cousins, to the community bath house. Once there, it’s clothes/yukatas off and a pre-soak scrub (“you’ll do the soapy leg can-can”), and then everybody’s into the big communal tub with an “Ahhhhh” for a happy shared experience of “newly sprouting,/ gangly bodies” and “cozy, creased,/ ancient bodies” all together. Afterwards, there’s a warm towel cuddle from an auntie, “sweet shaved ice for slurping,” and a quiet nighttime walk home. The lilting, occasionally rhyming text is redolent with familial love and the joy of a special shared experience, and Maclear is especially deft at evoking the way affection transcends language barriers. Rumpled, friendly lines, and gouache and watercolor art has a homey familiarity in cozy scenes of cousins goofing off together and chatting aunties; there’s an amiable yet wholesome candor in the communal naked bathing scenes about all kinds of women’s and girl’s bodies that tracks with the author’s stated goal of sharing and celebrating a culture where that’s a common shared experience. That experience will be run of the mill to many youngsters and eye-opening to others; while it could certainly prompt some interesting discussions about varying mores and why this doesn’t mean you can run naked through the library, it’ll also be welcomed as a warm and tender story of time with beloved distant family. A brief glossary explains Japanese terms; the author’s note explains her own history of such family and bath house visits.