Social distinction through sauna? An interview study of Japanese sauna enthusiasts and their sakatsu (サ活)

The article was peer-reviewed and published in the Michigan Journal of Asian Studies 3(2), Winter 2024 Edition. Abstract: This article puts a focus on Japanese sauna-going activities, also known as sakatsu (サ活), to look at how contemporary Japanese sauna enthusiasts make social distinctions between each other and in contrast to non-enthusiasts. Although the current Japanese sauna “boom” is much more massive in scale compared to the earlier developments regarding saunas in Japan, its social intricacies have been left largely understudied in academic research. The article is based on the author’s master’s thesis research, where a case study of 67 semi-structured interviews was done both online and locally in several locations across Japan. Bourdieu’s ideas of distinction and cultural capital are utilised as a theoretical basis while including contemporary commentaries and critiques. Consalvo’s theorisations of gaming capital are utilised to recontextualise the concept of cultural capital in the field of sauna-going. Sauna-going capital is developed as a theoretical approach for examining the social dimension of Japanese sauna enthusiasts. Through grounded theory, the five core categories of health and wellbeing, conduct, locality, connectedness, and masculinity are unveiled to demonstrate how diversified forms of distinction happen in different social contexts. The findings suggest that sauna enthusiasts have a shared value base according to which distinctions to non-enthusiasts are made. In addition, sauna enthusiasts are very multifaceted as a group, so a lot of contrasting opinions and assumptions emerge regarding the usage of sauna spaces. The study argues that there are in fact multiple, diverging ways of accumulating sauna-going capital. In addition, there is some evidence of these ways being delineated according to the demographic lines of age, gender, and social class.