JAPAN'S SUPER BOWL -- NEW TOILET TECHNOLOGY by Pam North In an age when technology is booming all around us, the toilet seems a bit archaic. Leave it to the country where horse sushi is on its menus and Tokyo women are gluing their bras in place to bring computer technology into the bathroom. The new high-tech toilets are a logical development in a country where airport vacuums whiz about independent of human touch, and researchers envision using cockroaches outfitted with miniature cameras to inspect sewer pipes. Japan's new toilets are almost like household pets - they're sensitive, smart, recognize a human presence and even bleat to acknowledge it. Japan has an enduring fascination with the toilet, replete with symposiums, research, web sites, museums and even an official holiday devoted to the subject. Solid 24-karat johns exist in Japan; nowhere else on earth do so many people spend so much money on such expensive thrones. Perhaps behind Japan's keen interest in toiletry is its Shinto religion's emphasis on physical and spiritual cleanliness. The Japanese hate impurities and focus extreme importance on a place of cleansing, with the toilet as a major designated spot. Also, the toilet is one of the few places that people in crowded Japan can go for a few minutes of quiet. Japan's plumbing advances are relatively recent; the country's sanitation was primitive until after World War II. Japan has had a tradition of borrowing foreign ideas and tweaking them into its own interpretation; it basically borrowed toilet technology from France, Switzerland and the United States, reverse- engineered it and improved it. From this methodology has emerged the ultimate toilet, called the Washlet, produced by Toto, Ltd., producer of vitreous porcelain fixtures since 1917 and now Japan's undisputed king of toilet manufacturers. The Washlet, undisputedly the Lexus of toiletry, sports enough bells and whistles to bowl over the most dedicated gadget freak. The futuristic toilets, with price tags of $2,000 to $4,000, are like something out of Star Trek, with a built-in seat warmer (a welcome feature in winter), hydraulic jets to spray water in four different directions for cleansing purposes, a warm air dryer, germ-destroying coatings, and even a digital clock and a radio. The toilets basically look like a standard American model, except for the control pad on which an array of buttons control the temperature and pressure of the water jets, automatically open and close the lid (one button for men lifts lid and seat, and another button for women lifts only the seat). Some toilets even have a hand-held remote control. The toilet can be programmed to warm up the seat to a specific temperature at a designated time. Familiarizing oneself with instructions on proper use is wise; these buttons, if pushed incorrectly in ignorance of their functions, can cause the equivalent of a storm of sloshing, squirting and swooshing, leaving the unitiated user stranded on the toilet, unsure of how to turn off the spraying bidet without soaking himself and his surroundings (a plight that has plagued many foreigners visiting in Japan, where the buttons are labeled in undecipherable Japanese). The bottom-washer function of the toilet is designed to eliminate the need for toilet paper. Toilet paper production uses enormous quantities of energy, water, raw materials and chemicals, and generates vast amounts of air and water pollution and solid waste. American daily toilet paper production is more than 100,000,000 rolls per day, and our nation's households alone consume 15,000,000 trees annually as bathroom tissue. The elimination of toilet paper would be a distinct advantage of the new toilet technology. At Masushita's research center in Tokyo, scientists are working on embedding technology into the porcelain of the toilet to enable it to catch a urine sample, shoot it full of lasers and quickly test it for the presence of glucose, kidney disease and eventually even cancer. Future smart toilets could compile and compare medical results on a daily basis. In a society where a rapidly expanding segment of the population is elderly, the toilet could conceivably perform a valuable service in monitoring health. The rest of the world, in contrast to its receptiveness to the universal inundation of Japanese cameras, autos and Walkmans, thus far has not seemed to covet Japan's pricey super bowls, but that may be changing. Toto, Ltd. sells about $400 million worth of the Washlet toilets per year, and estimates it has captured only half of Japan's potential market. Now Toto wants a crack at the American market, so the company has introduced a less expensive and less complicated model. The U.S. version is a $600 seat, lid and control panel that attaches to a regular American toilet bowl. It features a heated seat, bottom washer and deodorizing fan. Supposedly, when one gets used to the high-tech toilets, nothing else will suffice. Advanced digital toilet technology brings the prospect of computerized components going awry with unforeseen disastrous results, but perhaps it was inevitable that toilets, usually a relatively easy item to repair or replace, just had to get complicated. Photo to accompany article is at: http://www.thefactoryoutlet.com/bidetsdetailtoto.asp (use left photo) Caption: Japan's Toto Ltd. wants to bring its high-tech toilets like the Washlet to the United States.