Japan Navigator

How clean is your toilet? As the Mainichi Daily News tells us, there are people in Japan who believe that a spic-and-span toilet is responsible for a bright future. The cleaner the pot, the higher the amount of money that rolls into your bank account, they think. A whole host of books, websites and blogs is out there claiming that “toire soji”, cleaning the toilet, is nothing less than a goodluck charm. Even Beat Takeshi has gone on record with the statement that his success in life is due to the frequency with which he scrubs his pot.

[The Tosu, the toilet building of Tofukuji which is now an Important Cultural Property]

The bottomline is of course that the traditional Japanese (Shinto) penchant for cleanliness and purity is taken here to the fantastic heights. Buddhism also adds its dime: in Soto Zen Buddhism there is actually a god of the toilet, called Ususama Myo-o to whom prayers are said for good health. The National Treasure temple Zuiryuji in Takaoka has a effigy of this deity on prominent display and also sells charms to hang in your toilet.

[Toilets in the Tosu, the toilet building of the Tofukuji Zen temple in Kyoto]

In Zen temples toilets (and baths) are an official part of the garan, the temple complex, because cleansing the body is an important Zen routine. The best extant toilets in a Zen temple, which have even made it to the status of special cultural treasures, can be found in Tofukuji in Kyoto. Without partition or privacy, they do not look very attractive and reminded me of my year as a student in China, where at that time (more than 25 years ago) the toilets in the dormitory were not much better (not to speak of public toilets in the countryside!). But to come back to toilets in Japan and Tofukuji: is there an other country in the world where the toilet is regarded as a national treasure?

Note: Sotozen-Net also has this article promoting toilet and housecleaning.