It was my patients who connected my life with the sauna
Why did a doctor build a bathhouse? The story of Nuka to Yuge, which began in a consulting room.
Chapter 01 — In the consulting room: what patients who did not recover had in common
Naoki Yoshioka, the owner of Nuka to Yuge, is an orthopedic surgeon who runs a clinic in Kyotango. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, he noticed something in his consulting room: more and more patients were recovering more slowly than before, even though they kept up their rehabilitation. As he looked into it, a common thread appeared — disturbances of the autonomic nervous system.
Days of going out less, meeting no one, never unwinding. When the balance of mind and body is lost, the body’s natural healing ability cannot do its work either. While searching for another approach, neither medication nor rehabilitation, he came across a book. Reading its account of the benefits of sauna, backed by medical evidence, and then visiting a sauna himself, Yoshioka was convinced.
Naoki Yoshioka — orthopedic surgeon, who runs Yoshioka Clinic in Mineyama, Kyotango.
Chapter 02 — Two encounters: “Combine sauna and the enzyme bath, and something interesting is bound to happen”
Around the same time, he visited Awaji Island after an acquaintance told him that professional baseball players went there, and experienced a rice-bran enzyme bath. A way of bathing that uses neither gas nor electricity, warming you with the heat of microbial fermentation alone. He was struck by a distinctive warmth, different from a sauna, that lingered to the very tips of the body.
Searching the world over, he found no facility that offered both an enzyme bath and a Finnish-style sauna. If it did not exist, he would build it: a bathhouse that, as a doctor, he could recommend to his patients with confidence, made with his own hands. The idea of the first “fermentation steam house” in Japan began here.
A sauna room designed around light and shadow, with ease of breathing as the priority.
Chapter 03 — To Finland: “There are hot springs I can get into, but no saunas at all”
As the design progressed, there was a remark he could not forget — from a former colleague at the clinic, a speech-language therapist who uses a wheelchair. When he looked into it, barrier-free saunas were almost nonexistent in Japan at the time.
Yoshioka flew to Finland and learned directly from the president of the International Sauna Association. In the homeland of the sauna, barrier-free design had been “the basics,” so that soldiers who had lost the use of their limbs in war could still bathe. Back in Japan, he built that philosophy into the design.
- Sliding doors instead of push doors, so you can enter and leave by yourself in a wheelchair
- Folding benches, so three wheelchairs can come straight in
- The height of the cold bath was calculated with a physical therapist as “the safest height for transferring from a wheelchair”
- An Estonian-made stove circulates the hot air from the ceiling down to the floor, so even the low seat of a wheelchair gets properly warm
This is how the universal sauna JOKAINEN was born. The name means “everyone” in Finnish.
Chapter 04 — In the steam: a reunion after 35 years
After opening, something unexpected happened. A member of staff told him, “Doctor, your father is here today.” His father, whom he had not seen for more than 35 years since his parents’ divorce when he was ten, had come as a guest.
A short exchange in the changing room: “You’re doing well with the clinic.” The one who felt first of all how a bathhouse can dissolve the distance between people was the owner himself.
Chapter 05 — Recognition, and what comes next: from 12,000 facilities to 11
In 2023, Nuka to Yuge received SAUNACHELIN 2023, an award given to only 11 facilities a year out of more than 12,000 sauna facilities across Japan.
Even so, this is not the goal. While verifying medically the effects of combining sauna and enzyme bath, we will keep widening the possibilities of Japanese bathing culture, little by little, from the land of Tango. The story that began in a consulting room is still only its opening chapter.
SAUNACHELIN 2023
Founder
Naoki Yoshioka — orthopedic surgeon, representative of Nuka to Yuge. Board-certified orthopedic specialist of the Japanese Orthopaedic Association and director of Yoshioka Clinic in Mineyama, Kyotango. In 2024 he received the Japan Sauna Society Academic Award for the first research in the world demonstrating the effectiveness of enzyme baths. The director sees patients every day; the staff tend the bran bed every day.
Find out how the story continues — with your own body
For first-time guests, we recommend the Set Plan, which lets you experience the enzyme bath and the sauna in one visit.