Toilet Design

As with so many aspects of life in Japan, toilets truly evoke the old cliché about the country being a blend of east and west, old and new. At one extreme, public toilets are very often Asian-style squat toilets, simple toilets resembling a hole in the ground that require the uninitiated to engage in a tortuous balancing act to use them. At the other extreme, toilets in people’s homes are often high tech affairs such as ‘washlets’. These are based on western-style toilets but with the addition of a perplexing control panel – press the wrong button and your bare behind will receive an unexpected surprise in the form of a jet of water or a blast of hot air.

The advanced functions of washlets are an innovation of Japan’s (and indeed the world’s) foremost toilet manufacturer, Toto. The company now manufactures some of its best models in other countries too(1) in order to exploit growing overseas markets of toilet users who appreciate bidet features, heated toilet seats and recorded flushing sounds which drown out any embarrassing noises(2).

There are another two other types of toilet that are Japanese innovations. One is the hybrid toilet, which combines the design of a western toilet with that of a squat toilet to facilitate either sitting or squatting. This eliminates the necessity of installing two different styles of toilet (as is often seen in railway stations), thus appeasing both those with a germ phobia(3) and those who prefer comfort over hygiene.

The other type is basically identical to a western toilet but with an integrated washbasin in the cistern, which on the surface appears to be an ingenious water-saving function. When you consider however that Japanese toilets are uniformly capable of discharging so much water when flushed that you could dispose of a football, it seems more likely that this design addresses the lack of space in Japanese homes. Furthermore, when you take into consideration how much water the average Japanese person goes through by taking a bath everyday, the impact that cistern wash basins have on the environment is probably negligible.

Above, a hybrid toilet; Below, a squat toilet

Notes
(1) – Toto used to export its best models overseas, as reported in this 2003 BBC News article, before demand for these products began to exceed supply and it was forced to manufacture them outside of Japan too.
(2) – Introduced because of a tendency among Japanese women to repeatedly flush the toilet for the entire duration of their time on the toilet to avoid any possibility whatsoever of the person in the next cubicle hearing any embarrassing sounds, this function is known as otohime (lit: ’sound princess’). Toto also manufactures urinals with sensors that flush the toilet at the start of use (as well as at the end) for the benefit of men with paruresis.
(3) – Germ phobia seems to be the main reason for the continuing popularity of traditional squat toilet use in Japan, as the lack of physical contact is considered more hygienic by many people. For this reason, western style toilets in bars and restaurants often have sterilization fluid dispensers for patrons to clean the toilet seat before they sit down, or disposable paper toilet seat covers to avoid direct contact with the seat.

Check out the rest of the Toilets in Japan series, parts 2, 3 and 4.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 2:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Articles in English, Japan in General, Toilets In Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.