Japan’s high-tech toilets are no laughing matter

Shit. Poop. Doo doo. Crap. Turd.

Are you giggling yet?

Take a dump. Make a deposit. Drop the kids off at the pool. Release the chocolate hostage. Invest in the logging industry.

How about now?

People love turning uncomfortable things and situations into jokes, and the English language is replete with colorful words and expressions to describe our bowel movements. Going to the bathroom is completely normal, natural, and biologically necessary – but because it’s a private act that involves our most private of body parts, it remains a taboo topic of discussion.

The toilet, by extension, is rarely talked about. After all, it is easier to make it a joke than to recognize the modern toilet as a life-saving invention. Just how important is it? According to the World Toilet Organization:

Around one billion people in our world today face the indignity of defecating in the open. Lack of clean and safe toilets at schools leads to higher dropout [rates] among girls once they reach puberty. Diarrhoeal diseases – a direct consequence of poor sanitation – kill more children every year than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined. Clean and safe toilets are prerequisites for health, dignity, privacy, and education.

What can be done to make the “silly” toilet serious?

“That’s an eternal question,” says Nariko Yamashita, company spokeswoman at Toto, the world’s largest toilet manufacturer.

Tech in Asia was recently given a private tour of the company’s Tokyo showroom to learn more about the toilet’s evolution – from simple porcelain bowls to high-tech electronic affairs that prevent disease and save the environment.

A clean slate

In 1912, a Japanese man by the name of Kazuchika Okura set up a laboratory in Kitakyushu to develop sanitary ceramics similar to those being produced in the US and Europe. At that time, many toilets in Japan were of the squatting variety still common around Asia. There was still no public sewage system – even in Tokyo – and outhouses still existed in rural areas.

Fast forward to 1923 and the Great Kanto Earthquake. Tokyo was leveled, over 100,000 people lost their lives, and the region was forced to rebuild from the ground up. Starting from zero allowed city planners to construct a modern sewage system, and western-style (sit-down) toilets began making a more widespread appearance.

Economic boom also furthered the expansion of modern toilets in Japan. Japan’s post-war economic miracle would elevate Toto to new heights.

“After [WWII], there was a big push to revitalize the economy,” says Yamashita. “There was a huge construction boom in the 1970s, with a lot of new buildings being built each year. In those new buildings, developers opted for western-style toilets.”

Let’s wash

Royal flush

Gray dawn

Chemical-free clean