The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

Toto was founded in 1917 in Kitakyushu, an industrial port city at the tip of Japan’s southernmost main island. Like many Japanese companies, Toto excelled at adopting and refining overseas technologies, such as Western-style seated flush toilets, for the Japanese market. In the 1960s, Toto noticed a little-known bidet-like device being used in the medical industry in the United States. It began redeveloping the device in Japan, enlisting more than 300 employees to test and optimize aspects like the water stream’s flow, angle and temperature. The Toto Washlet first appeared in 1980. At the time, the product had three primary functions: washing, drying and a heated seat. It was expensive, costing the equivalent of about $2,000 in today’s currency, and early models were known to sometimes spray inspectors in the face. The Japanese public was slow to warm to the devices. It took Toto 18 years to sell its first 10 million Washlets. But Toto added features — deodorizing in 1992 and autom ... Read full article.