for warmth. Eventually it gets to be too much. Thereâs only one option left. Though I have boycotted McDonaldâs for years, this is where I go because I know they have heated toilet seats. I know they have TOTO.
Â
Japan makes the most advanced, remarkable toilets in the world. Japanese toilets can, variously, check your blood pressure, play music, wash and dry your anus and âfront partsâ by means of an in-toilet nozzle that sprays water and warm air, suck smelly ions from the air, switch on a light for you as you stumble into the bathroom at night, put the seat lid down for you (a function known as the âmarriage-saverâ), and flush away your excreta without requiring anything as old-fashioned as a tank. These devices are known as high-function toilets, but even the lowliest high-function toilet will have as standard an in-built bidet system, a heated seat, and some form of nifty control panel.
Consequently, first-time travelers to Japan have for years told a similar tale. Between being befuddled by used underwear-vending machines and unidentifiable sushi, they will have an encounter that proceeds like this: foreigner goes to bathroom and finds a receptacle with a high-tech control panel containing many buttons with peculiar symbols on them, and a strange nozzle in the bowl. Foreigner doesnât speak Japanese and doesnât understand the symbols, or the English translations that are sometimes provided. Does that button release a mechanical tampon grab or a flush? What, please, is a âfront bottomâ? Foreigner finishes business, looks in vain for a conventional flush handle, andthenâalso in vainâfor which button controls the flush. Foreigner presses a button, gets sprayed with water by the nozzle instead and is soaked.
This is the Washlet experience. The Washlet, originally a brand name for a toilet seat with bidet function, has become for the Japanese a generic word for a high-function toilet (though usually translated as
Washeretto
). In modern Japan, the Washlet is as unremarkable and loved and taken for granted as the Band-Aid. Since 1980, TOTO, Japanâs biggest and oldest toilet manufacturer, has sold 20 million Washlets to a nation of 160 million people. According to census figures, more Japanese households now have a Washlet than a computer. They are so standard, some Japanese schoolchildren refuse to use anything else.
It is easy for anyone who has not used a Washlet to dismiss it as yet another product of Japanese eccentricity. Robo-toilets. Gadgetry and gimmickry, bells and whistles. Such sniping ignores the fact that the Japanese make toilets that are beautifully engineered, and that the stunning success of the high-function toilet holds lessons for anyoneâfrom public health officials to marketing expertsâwhose work involves understanding and changing human behavior and decision making. It is instructive because only sixty years ago Japan was a nation of pit latrines. People defecated by squatting. They did not use water to cleanse themselves, but paper or stone or sticks. They did not know what a bidet was, nor did they care. Today, only 3 percent of toilets produced in Japan are squat types. The Japanese sit, use water, and expect a heated seat as a matter of course. In less than a century, the Japanese toilet industry has achieved the equivalent of persuading a country that drove on the left in horse-drawn carriages to move to the right and, by the way, to drive a Ferrari instead. Two things interest me about the Japanese toilet revolution: that it happened, and that it has strikingly failed to spread.
Â
TOTOâthe name comes from a contraction of the Japanese words for âAsian porcelainââranks among the worldâs top three biggest plumbing manufacturers. In 2006, its net sales were $4.2 billion. It has 20,000employees, two-thirds of Japanâs bathroom market, seven factories in Japan, and a presence in sixteen
Â
Japan makes the most advanced, remarkable toilets in the world. Japanese toilets can, variously, check your blood pressure, play music, wash and dry your anus and âfront partsâ by means of an in-toilet nozzle that sprays water and warm air, suck smelly ions from the air, switch on a light for you as you stumble into the bathroom at night, put the seat lid down for you (a function known as the âmarriage-saverâ), and flush away your excreta without requiring anything as old-fashioned as a tank. These devices are known as high-function toilets, but even the lowliest high-function toilet will have as standard an in-built bidet system, a heated seat, and some form of nifty control panel.
Consequently, first-time travelers to Japan have for years told a similar tale. Between being befuddled by used underwear-vending machines and unidentifiable sushi, they will have an encounter that proceeds like this: foreigner goes to bathroom and finds a receptacle with a high-tech control panel containing many buttons with peculiar symbols on them, and a strange nozzle in the bowl. Foreigner doesnât speak Japanese and doesnât understand the symbols, or the English translations that are sometimes provided. Does that button release a mechanical tampon grab or a flush? What, please, is a âfront bottomâ? Foreigner finishes business, looks in vain for a conventional flush handle, andthenâalso in vainâfor which button controls the flush. Foreigner presses a button, gets sprayed with water by the nozzle instead and is soaked.
This is the Washlet experience. The Washlet, originally a brand name for a toilet seat with bidet function, has become for the Japanese a generic word for a high-function toilet (though usually translated as
Washeretto
). In modern Japan, the Washlet is as unremarkable and loved and taken for granted as the Band-Aid. Since 1980, TOTO, Japanâs biggest and oldest toilet manufacturer, has sold 20 million Washlets to a nation of 160 million people. According to census figures, more Japanese households now have a Washlet than a computer. They are so standard, some Japanese schoolchildren refuse to use anything else.
It is easy for anyone who has not used a Washlet to dismiss it as yet another product of Japanese eccentricity. Robo-toilets. Gadgetry and gimmickry, bells and whistles. Such sniping ignores the fact that the Japanese make toilets that are beautifully engineered, and that the stunning success of the high-function toilet holds lessons for anyoneâfrom public health officials to marketing expertsâwhose work involves understanding and changing human behavior and decision making. It is instructive because only sixty years ago Japan was a nation of pit latrines. People defecated by squatting. They did not use water to cleanse themselves, but paper or stone or sticks. They did not know what a bidet was, nor did they care. Today, only 3 percent of toilets produced in Japan are squat types. The Japanese sit, use water, and expect a heated seat as a matter of course. In less than a century, the Japanese toilet industry has achieved the equivalent of persuading a country that drove on the left in horse-drawn carriages to move to the right and, by the way, to drive a Ferrari instead. Two things interest me about the Japanese toilet revolution: that it happened, and that it has strikingly failed to spread.
Â
TOTOâthe name comes from a contraction of the Japanese words for âAsian porcelainââranks among the worldâs top three biggest plumbing manufacturers. In 2006, its net sales were $4.2 billion. It has 20,000employees, two-thirds of Japanâs bathroom market, seven factories in Japan, and a presence in sixteen
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