{"id":564700,"date":"2026-05-03T22:49:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T22:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/564700\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T22:49:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T22:49:26","slug":"fuel-costs-squeeze-japans-struggling-traditional-public-bath-operators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/564700\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuel costs squeeze Japan&#8217;s struggling traditional public bath operators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"ArticleTag_articleTag__P1Zo7\" href=\"https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/business\/consumer\" data-trackable=\"primary-tag\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Consumer<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleHeader_newsArticleHeaderSubtitle__ZlvPp\" data-trackable=\"subhead\" data-dark-mode=\"false\">Operations that have been in business for more than a century face new challenge<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-main img-fluid ImageNew_imageNewImageResponsive__f1VTu\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/https:\/\/cms-image-bucket-productionv3-ap-northeast-1-a7d2.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com\/images\/8\/3.jpeg\" alt=\"20260428N Japan bath house\" width=\"780\" height=\"auto\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleCaption_newsArticleCaption__fxo8v\" data-trackable=\"caption\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" style=\"display:block\">This public bathhouse in Kofu city, Japan, uses fuel oil to\u00a0heat the water. (Photo by Kentaro Arai)<\/p>\n<p>YUTA SHIMASAKI, KONATSU OCHI and KENTARO ARAI<\/p>\n<p data-dark-mode=\"false\" class=\"Paragraph_paragraph__2p1wC\">TOKYO &#8212; Rising fuel prices have weighed down heavily on Japanese public bathhouse operators already struggling to stay afloat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consumer Operations that have been in business for more than a century face new challenge This public bathhouse&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[79322,84,21492,1294,23187,47045,193596,20626,167341,193595,24513,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-564700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-bath","tag-business","tag-costs","tag-economy","tag-fuel","tag-japans","tag-operators","tag-public","tag-squeeze","tag-struggling","tag-traditional","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}