The rising sun and the hidden moon

The Washington Post recently went on the job with Kyoji Asada, a top designer for Japan's Toto Ltd. Toto makes toilets. Asada inspects them in the field [1] -- conducting random bathroom assessments that, Asada says, keeps himself and his fellow engineers on their toes.

It's clear from this article that a lot of very talented people put a lot of deep thought into the design and construction of that in which we poop. It's interesting to read the details about Mr. Asada and his efforts to keep his company on top of our bottoms; but just as interesting in this article are the brief asides that offer incredibly insight into Japanese bathroom culture:

"{Toto has developed} the Rolls Royces of porcelain thrones. There are toilets with heated seats. Toilets with cleansing water sprays and drying-action air blasts. Toilets with built-in deodorizers and soothing river sounds to cover up embarrassing smells and sounds."
"The bathrooms at the two-month-old Kitakyushu International Airport in southwestern Japan contain some of Toto's newest, top-of-the-line toilets -- elegant egg-shaped units that seem to hover above the ground."
"Bathrooms, Asada explained an hour later en route to Toto's factory labs in the heart of this city of 1 million, are accorded a special place in Japan. In a cramped society, toilets offer a rare form of personal escape and, these days, a chance for a refreshing wash."
"In two decades, Toto has sold more than 20 million of its electronic Washlets -- high-tech toilet lids with bidet-like sprayers first inspired by a short-lived American invention for hemorrhoid sufferers. Washlets are now almost ubiquitous in Japan, a fact Asada credits to the national obsession with hygiene."
"A Japanese proverb says that pregnant women who keep their toilets sparkling clean will give birth to attractive babies."
"After listening to feedback from housewives ashamed about the unsightly marks they occasionally left inside toilet bowls, Asada invented a unit fitted with a tornado-like flush and cleaning cycle that wipes away all the evidence."
"The company's toilet museum {includes} an extra-wide seat of honor for sumo wrestlers."

As a result of this site's efforts to investigate and spread the gospel of Shameless Shitting [2], I've arrived at the estimation that about half of the American population is Shameful and half is Shameless. Based on this article and other anecdotal information I've accumulated over the years, I think it's safe to say that Japan has a heavy bias towards the Shameful. And the points highlighted above illustrate what happens to a profoundly poop-phobic society: they become obsessed with poop. The Japanese appear terrified of acknowledging the fact that they poop; and in the extremes they reach to pretend they don't poop, they associate themselves with poop even further. The imperatives of Shameful Shitting serve only to intensify the stigma of poop on the Shameful Shitter.