The Rise of the Japanese Toilet {Toto washlet toilets with bidets!}

New York Times ^ | 29th May 2025 | River Akira Davis and Kiuko Notoya

[Cronos]

In 1982, a peculiar commercial aired on televisions across Japan.

An actress in a pink floral dress and an updo drops paint on her hand and futilely attempts to wipe it off with toilet paper. She looks into the camera and asks: “Everyone, if your hands get dirty, you wash them, right?”

“It’s the same for your bottom, deserve to be washed, too.”

...43yrs later, Japan has overwhelmingly accepted Toto’s innovation. Washlet-style bidets, sold by Toto and a few smaller rivals, are a common feature in Japan’s offices and public restrooms and account for >80% of all household toilets, according to government surveys.

Toto now sees a similar shift emerging in the United States.

After decades of trying to persuade leery American consumers of the merits of bidets, Toto Washlets have become something of a social phenomenon — popping up on social media tours of five-star hotels and celebrity homes. The comedian Ali Wong devoted a segment of her 2024 Netflix special to Toto’s “magical Japanese toilet.” In 2022, the rapper Drake gifted four Totos to the artist DJ Khaled.

An industry report last year showed that more than two in five renovating homeowners in the United States are choosing to install toilets with specialty features, including bidet toilet seats. Toto’s profits in its Americas housing equipment business have grown more than eightfold over the past five years — and the company has its sights on expanding even more.

...Ryan Gregory, a biology professor at the University of Guelph in Canada, experienced Washlets for the first time during a recent trip to Japan.

Initially, he was apprehensive. “It’s not a region of your anatomy that you’re used to having sprayed for most of us,” Mr. Gregory said. “I think fairly quickly you realize that North American toilets are vastly inferior.”

[FrankRizzo890]

Just how much have bidets taken over in Japan? The restrooms on the bullet trains have them. THAT’S how much they’ve taken over.

[VanShuyten]

“ The restrooms on the bullet trains have them. ”

I believe the writers at the NYT finally saw “Bullet Train” with Brad Pitt. His infatuation with the Shinkansen toilets was pretty funny.

I can remember back in the early 80s when the Japanese train toilets were porcelain trenches that flushed directly on the tracks.

[William Tell]

Look up Luxe NEO 120 on Amazon.com. About $40 and relatively easy to install.

If your experience matches mine, you will never go back.

My brother was immediately converted after using mine.

His two sons were immediately converted after using his.

[Winniesboy]

I prefer the bidet as a separate unit, independent of but adjacent to the toilet. Would never go back 15 years after installing these installing these - now feels very uncomfortable visiting a house without them. I wonder if one of the reasons for the success of the Japanese multi-function unit is the lack of space in the average Japanese house?

(By the way - were you moved to post this item as light relief after your recent theological heroics?)

[Menes]

Hello,

you are most certainly right with your assumption. Japanese dwellings, at least those in the big cities, are significantly smaller on average than Western ones.

I believe that separate bidets, while taking up more space, will be easier to maintain, as well as being more reliable in the long run, than the ingenious Japanese contraptions.