Japan
Since the success of the film Perfect Days, the story of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, worldwide interest in Japanese toilets has been further fueled. In Shibuya, the toilet hype is an opportunity: they launched a toilet tour with seventeen stops.
In Shibuya, a tour has opened of seventeen public toilet facilities, all designed by renowned architects such as Tadao Ando and Shigeru Ban. Not coincidentally: interest in Japanese toilets has been growing since the success of Perfect Days.
The Oscar-nominated film, the work of German director Wim Wenders, tells the story of Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho), a cleaner in Tokyo who cleans public toilets as if it were a matter of life and death. The film, described in this newspaper as a “sublime love letter to a life of servitude and routine”, won the prize for best international film at the Academy Awards.
Background noises
Visitors have been writing home about the Japanese toilets for some time now. From heated toilet seats to a built-in bidet, automatic flushing or a button to turn on background noise, so that no one can hear your message from the other toilet cubicles.
Cities in other countries can only look enviously at Tokyo as they struggle with a shortage of public toilets and complaints about safety and cleanliness. A study by the ULB showed that the Brussels Region has only one public toilet per 11,000 inhabitants. The Japanese capital, a city with 14 million inhabitants, is easily doing five times better with 53 public toilets per 100,000 inhabitants.
