The Original Capybara Open-Air Bath

The Original Capybara Open-Air Bath is held each winter at Izu Shaboten Zoo in Ito, Shizuoka Prefecture. From November to early April the zoo's capybara family soaks in an outdoor hot bath. The zoo is where the capybara bath began, and it has become known as a winter tradition of Izu.

The zoo, then called Izu Shaboten Park, began keeping capybaras in 1966, when they were still rare in Japan. In the winter of 1982 keepers were cleaning the enclosure with hot water and noticed the capybaras sitting at ease in the warm puddles, with their feet and hindquarters in the water. That was how the zoo found out that capybaras like a bath, and the open-air bath has been held every winter since.

Around the winter solstice the bath becomes a yuzu bath, after the Japanese custom of bathing with yuzu citrus on the shortest day of the year. The zoo began it in 1996, a year of the rat, and it now draws visitors from abroad as well. The capybaras often stay in the water for as long as an hour, so the crowd along the edge thins out once the first rush after the bath begins has passed.

In 2012 the zoo signed a capybara bath agreement with Nagasaki Bio Park. Since 2018 the two have worked with Nasu Animal Kingdom, Saitama Children's Zoo and Ishikawa Zoo as a group of five. Each season the five zoos hold a long-bath contest, timing how long one capybara from each stays in the water. The first was held in 2013.

The zoo also runs Anitouch and Anitouch PARK, indoor spaces where visitors can meet animals up close. The first opened in Minato Mirai, Yokohama, in 2021. There the capybaras bathe in clawfoot bathtubs instead of the rock bath of Izu.

The 2026 season

The 2026 season marks 60 years since the zoo began keeping capybaras and the 30th year of the yuzu bath. On most weekends of the season the bath water gets something added, among them maple leaves, mandarins, apples, orchids and, at the close, cherry blossoms. On one day in January the yuzu bath gives way to a nanakusa bath, after the seven spring herbs of the New Year. The next long-bath contest of the five zoos will be the 15th.