A colourised portrait photograph made in a commercial studio showing four Japanese women posing in and around a circular wooden tub, simulating bathing.

One woman stands to the left of the tub with her right hand inside it and her left clutching fabric to her chest. Another woman sits in the tub holding a piece of fabric, as if drying her neck and hair. The other two women are crouching in front of the right side of the tub, one behind the other, with two wooden buckets in front of them on the floor. The standing woman and two crouching women wear sarong-like garments wrapped around their legs. All the women are topless. The tub is made of broad wooden staves and is bound with rope or cord. It has an opening on its left side and bundle of wood in protruding. Other bundles sit on the floor next to it. Wooden floorboards are visible beneath the women and a plain wall or screen is behind them. Original caption (in ink beneath the photograph): ‘The bathers’.