Olympics-Japan's next restroom revolution? Phasing out squat toilets for Tokyo 2020

TOTO

19/02/2020 01:30

By Sakura Murakami
    TOKYO, Feb 19 (Reuters) - On southwestern Japan's Miyajima
island, a short walk from one of the country's most famous
ancient temple sites, there's a brand new attraction for
tourists - a state-of-the art public toilet block nearly as big
as a tennis court.
    The 183 square metre facility – created jointly by the local
municipality and Toto, Japan's biggest toilet maker – is just
one of hundreds that have been spruced up across the country
ahead of this summer's Olympic Games in Tokyo, removing
old-school squat toilets to welcome foreign tourists.
    The challenge is dwarfed by that faced by planners for
Tokyo's previous Olympics. Before the 1964 games, only 20% of
the city had a sewerage system, pit toilets festooned the city
and trucks dubbed 'honey wagons' patrolled neighbourhoods to
suck human waste into tanks for disposal elsewhere.
    But the refurbishment programme for 2020 plugs into a public
concept of advanced cleanliness that has become embedded in the
Japanese psyche since the 60s, Masakazu Toki, professor emeritus
in cultural anthropology at Edogawa University says.
    "Japan wanted to become a 'leading country' in the eyes of
its visitors by making the country pristinely clean," evident in
a campaign to make the streets cleaner ahead of the 1964
Olympics said Toki. 
    Bullet trains, a strong economy, hygiene – these were all
part of the process of creating a new identity "as an advanced
nation" of which cleanliness still remains an integral part of
the national identity, he added.
    This year's Olympics are no exception.
    With a government survey showing roughly 40% of Japan's
public restrooms hosted squat stalls in 2016, the government
started a campaign to help municipalities - particularly in
popular destinations like Kyoto - fund conversion to sit-down
toilets, anticipating Olympics tourists will explore Japan
beyond Tokyo.
    Statistics from the Japan Tourism Agency show a total of 332
restrooms were refurbished between fiscal 2017 and 2019.    
    As well as establishing gold-medal hygiene, Japan's restroom
revolution has fostered a toilet culture that has evolved to
embrace a popular anime character with buttocks for a head
('Butt Detective') and dayglo 'poop museums' offering a cute
tribute to bathroom visits - as well as restrooms packed with
hi-tech gadgetry.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N21Z2T7
    Toto has played a leading role in developing the latter.
    Heated seats, lids that open and close automatically, bowls
that self-deodorize - these features have become standard in
tens of millions of Japanese homes since Toto sold its first
buttock-cleansing Washlet toilet seat at the dawn of the 1980s.
    At its base in Kitakyushu in southwestern Japan, a museum
documents Toto's progress from squat porcelain to its latest
model, a design that squirts water out at different speeds with
larger droplets to maximise cleanliness for a princely 604,000
yen (just under $5,500).
    During a recent trip, 82-year-old museum visitor Tsunekazu
Orii vividly recalled his first encounter with the Washlet in
the early 1980s.
    "I was taken aback when I first saw it, but there was so
much talk about how it would clean you," he said. "I knew it was
going to be the next big thing."

($1 = 109.8700 yen)
    

    <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Miyajima public toilet pictures and video (page in Japanese)   
https://tinyurl.com/rfy7ozz
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 (Reporting by Sakura Murakami; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
 ((Sakura.Murakami@thomsonreuters.com))