Where toilets are also shrines

Japan’s washrooms, said to be watched over by a toilet god, are clean and full of advanced technology.

If there’s one thing Japan is passionate about, it’s toilets. Potties, loos, restrooms, johns, powder rooms, however you say it, Japan has put a lot of thought into the smallest room of the house.

Japan is famous for its high-tech, derriere-washing, tushie-warming toilets. These are such a valued part of Japanese culture that Toto, the Japanese brand, has just built a $60-million museum devoted to its renowned product, at its home base in Kita-Kyushu, on the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands.

Here are things you might not know about Japan’s obsession with lavatories. 1. There’s an app for that

Don’t take your chances going to a restroom without a little seat in the stall for your baby, or a fold-down platform for standing on while you get changed so you don’t have to put your feet on the bathroom floor.

Lion, a manufacturer of diarrhea medicine Stoppa (and various toiletries and detergents), provides an app @Toilet for people who need to take care of their business urgently away from home or office. Click on the “emergency” button and it locates the closest restroom. 2. There’s a god of the toilet. Really.

You know how Japan’s washrooms got to be so clean and full of advanced technology? Maybe because they’re being watched over by a toilet god.

According to the myth, Kawaya-no-kami, the Japanese toilet god, was, appropriately enough, born from the excrement of Izanami, the Japanese goddess of the Earth and darkness. In a time long before Washlets, the contents from outhouses were used as fertilizer, so Kawaya-no-kami was said to both provide a good harvest and also protect people from falling into the toilet pit. 3. There are toilet rituals

Different parts of Japan sometimes have customs associated with toilets.

In Aichi prefecture, there’s a tradition known as “benjo-biraki” (opening of the toilet) during which people sit on the loo to eat snacks and sip tea. 4. The government has launched a “Japan toilet challenge”

Toilets are a feminist issue. Or so the government says.

The Japanese government this year launched the Japan Toilet Prize, part of a campaign to improve quality of life by improving the quality of restrooms. The task is to ensure that washrooms are always clean and safe and to tackle the thorniest of bathroom problems: how to reduce the lines outside ladies’ loos.

“Without appropriate environments where women can use sanitation facilities, their access to social participation in schools and workplaces is restricted,” Haruko Arimura, the Japanese minister for women’s empowerment, says.