Tempest in a Tub

Humanitarian is not the word that leaps to mind at the sight of slick, pomaded Ujitoshi Konomi. One of the sharpest characters in Tokyo's gaudy Ginza district, Konomi has been in his time a gangster and political terrorist in Shanghai, a smuggler, black-marketeer and saloonkeeper in Japan. Konomi is also a man with important political connections. To forestall trouble, he is constantly accompanied by a bodyguard, a onetime lieutenant colonel in the Imperial Army. Still and all, it was as a humanitarian that Konomi filed a request with the Welfare Ministry back in 1949 to build a bathhouse for Tokyo's working classes.

"Think," Konomi urged the ministry, "how unfortunate are the citizens of Tokyo. Far away from the mountains and the "open sea, they are unblessed by fresh breezes and deprived of the benefits of green leaves. They drag their lives from day to day through the dust and dirt of the city. The Tokyo Hot Springs," said Ujitoshi Konomi, putting a name to his project, "will change all this."

Miss Turko. It did, indeed. Konomi's Hot Springs, reared at a cost of half a million dollars and opened last April, brought benefits to Tokyo far beyond those of the mountains and the open sea. There, thanks to Konomi, Tokyo's gangsters, plutocrats, diplomats, legislators and sybarites could shake off the dust of the city in a palace rivaling Roman Cara-calla's wildest dreams. It boasted 50 private bath and massage rooms tended by a corps of 130 cute, almond-eyed masseuses in pale blue bras and panties. Miss Turko, they all called themselves, in keeping with the Turkish atmosphere.

Lesser functionaries, just as cute, dispensed beer, food, soft drinks and cigarettes. There was a mass milk bath for sensitive males in a huge, raspberry-tiled tub on the second floor; a lemonade bath for ladies on the first. There were private rooms with beds and attendants for after-bath relaxation, a roof garden, a nightclub, a tea room, three restaurants, a barber and a beauty shop. Visitors (among them Errol Flynn) and customers, spending a relaxed Saturday evening at Konomi's Hot Springs, thought nothing of getting a bill of $100 or more. It was, in short, as one well-scrubbed G.I. said last week, "the damnedest bath I ever had in my life."

To make the benefits universal, Konomi had even provided two mass bathtubs where, for little more than ten times what they would have to pay elsewhere, Tokyo's working classes could wash themselves without benefit of any Miss Turkos.

Not Sanitary. All would have been well had not Konomi's bath water seeped out of the Welfare Ministry and under the door of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Many a Tokyo diplomat, particularly those from China, Indonesia and the Philippines, had paused even while enjoying' his bath, to ask how a country so impoverished that it could not pay reparations could still afford such a bathtub. Their questions finally reached Premier Yoshida.

Last week the Premier ordered a rigid investigation.

There was a sudden scurry of well bathed legislators and diplomats for cover. "I gave strict orders at the time I saw the blueprints," alibied one Welfare Ministry official, "that beds should not be provided in rooms attached to the baths, since this is not sanitary." "I saw some half-naked girls running around on the second floor," admitted an investigating Diet member, "but I got the impression that they were not all bad girls." He did feel, he added, that "due to international repercussions, something should be done." So did most everyone else. The trouble was--what? Nice as it might be to dump Bathmaster Konomi in hot water, it would still be a pity to tear down his beautiful bath. At week's end, far away from the mountains and the open sea, it was still going strong.

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