‘The cleanest toilet in the world’: Why I joined a guided dunny tour

This story is part of the November 30 edition of Good Weekend.See all 15 stories.

I’m walking towards a public toilet in a Tokyo park and being followed by a guy with a video camera. When I push open the door – which, like the walls, is made of transparent tinted glass – he follows me in, filming everything. I shut the door behind us, then turn the lock on the door. The glass enclosure instantly turns an opaque purple so people can’t see us inside.

Yes, this is an out-of-the-ordinary toilet; and no, please believe me, I don’t usually let men with video cameras follow me into public conveniences.

I’m in the middle of a guided tour of toilets in Shibuya that are part of The Tokyo Toilet, a project involving 17 facilities created by 16 big-name architects and designers. “Just to let you know, there will be toilet stops on this tour,” jokes our enthusiastic guide, Noriko Hashimoto, when we meet at a hotel in Shibuya and are ushered into a mini-van.

The cameraman is filming a mini-documentary for YouTube, and he’s shadowing me because he’s interested in why on earth an Australian would spend his time in Tokyo hanging around toilets. There are lots of answers to that question.

The first is that I adored the most recent Wim Wenders film, Perfect Days, which uses the toilets in the project as a backdrop. It’s a meditative film that follows the daily routine of a toilet cleaner, and it finds nobility in a life of quiet rituals, taking pride in one’s work and being open to the small, beautiful moments in the world. It was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards, and lead actor Koji Yakusho won the Best Actor Award at last year’s 76th Cannes Film Festival.

After seeing the film, I was intrigued to discover The Tokyo Toilet project was conceived and funded by the film’s producer, Koji Yanai, who is group senior executive officer of Fast Retailing, the parent company of Japanese clothing design and retail giant Uniqlo. He’s the 47-year-old son of Fast Retailing’s founder, the multi-billionaire businessman Tadashi Yanai, and is part of the richest family in Japan.

In Shigeru Ban’s bathroom, glass walls turn opaque when the door is locked.Credit: Satoshi Nagare, Courtesy of Shibuya City

I speak to him via Zoom from a conference room at Uniqlo City Tokyo in Ariake, and he tells me the first spark for The Tokyo Toilet came when he was moved by We’re The Superhumans, a British trailer made to promote Channel 4s coverage of the 2016 Rio Paralympics. After Tokyo was announced as the host of the 2020 Olympics, he had discussions with Shingo Kunieda, who is considered the greatest wheelchair tennis player of all time and is also a Uniqlo Global Brand Ambassador.

“He told me that even though he was excited that our country was hosting the Olympics and Paralympics, he was also worried about Tokyo as a host city,” he says. “He told me how Tokyo was not really a friendly place for people with disabilities, and how much of a struggle it was just to catch a bus or get to platforms to catch a train. I was shocked, because I didn’t realise this before.”

Yanai was also inspired by his father’s motto, “Made for all”, which is his philosophy for Uniqlo as a brand. “So I started thinking about something that is necessary for everyone, and that’s when I thought about public toilets. Regardless of age, gender, nationality or religion, we all need toilets every day. But there were many issues with Tokyo’s public toilets. People found
them dirty, scary, bad-smelling, sometimes difficult to find, and not friendly for kids or people with disabilities.”

His solution was to enlist many of the finest architects in the business – in fact, four of them have won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel – along with other creatives, including Australian designer Marc Newson.

Yanai collaborated with The Nippon Foundation (which managed and oversaw the project), Daiwa House Industry (in charge of construction) and Toto (the Japanese toilet company advised on the state-of-the-art equipment). Shibuya City endorsed The Tokyo Toilet and, since April this year, has managed and maintained it.

The first three toilets were completed in May 2020, and the final ones were finished and opened to the public in March last year. Yanai declines to discuss the cost of the design and build, but there are reported estimates of ¥80 to ¥120 million (about $800,000 to $1.2 million) per toilet.

Miles Pennington’s Hatagaya toilet incorporates a wide forecourt.Credit: Satoshi Nagare, Courtesy of Shibuya City

On the tour I see nine of the 17 toilets, and each is unique. At the aforementioned toilet that changes colour, designed by Shigeru Ban, we discover it’s become an Instagram-friendly attraction. While we do observe people going in to use the toilets, many are taking turns filming their friends walking in and turning the transparent cubicles opaque, then walking straight back out again.

All the facilities had to stick to certain guidelines (gender-inclusive, disability- and child-friendly, universally understandable pictograms on signage), but each one features a completely different design.

The tiled, dome‑topped toilets by Toyo Ito at Yoyogi-Hachiman look like oversized mushrooms; British designer Miles Pennington’s toilet in Hatagaya incorporates a wide, multi-purpose forecourt with retractable seating; in Nishisando, Sou Fujimoto’s design is like a cross between a house on a Greek Island and a big white wave, with taps cleverly installed at various heights along the front lip of the structure.

“We’re about to see the cleanest toilet in the world,” says Hashimoto, our tour guide, as we pull up at Nanago Dori Park.

Kazoo Sato’s egg-shaped, voice-activated facility in Nanago Dori Park is described as “the cleanest toilet in the world”.Credit: Satoshi Nagare, Courtesy of Shibuya City

We get out, cross the road, round a corner and there is Kazoo Sato’s toilet. It looks like half a giant egg. And if you need to go inside to do your business, it’s a contactless experience. Once you scan the QR code outside with your phone, you simply use the phrase “Hi toilet!” and then give it an instruction, whether it’s to open the door, lock the door, flush or vary the strength of the bidet. You can even select the music you’d like to accompany your visit, including jazz, rock, soul, “nature sounds” – and something I don’t want to think about called “therapootic music”.

Then there’s Kengo Kuma’s toilet in Nabeshima Shoto Park. Kuma is one of the world’s most celebrated architects. His many works include the Japan National Stadium, built for the 2020 Olympics.

“When I was first approached by Yanai-san, I admit that I wondered about the reality of a project involving toilets in Shibuya,” Kuma says, sitting in his sun-filled rooftop meeting room in Aoyama, surrounded by shelves filled with multiple copies of his books. “I thought finding places for the toilets would be difficult, because space is so limited here. But the location I chose I knew well, because where I went to university is not far from there and I had memories of it. It’s in the centre of Tokyo but it has a village feeling.”

Kuma called his design A Walk In The Woods, and, as with much of his work, he used wood “because I wanted to fit in with the surroundings. A normal toilet is a concrete box. That would destroy the beauty of the park and not be embraced by the community. I think our design is subtle and quiet and it flows.”

Kengo Kuma’s “Walk in the Woods” design in Nabeshima Shoto Park.Credit: Satoshi Nagare, Courtesy of Shibuya City

Kuma’s Olympic stadium is an imposing building that was seen by more than three billion TV viewers during the 2020 Olympics, but he’s also the designer of a public toilet in a Tokyo park. Does he see any connection between the two?

“Oh, there’s very similar thinking behind them,” he says. “The National Stadium is set in a big park [Meiji Jingu Gaien], so I wanted it to have a dialogue with the trees. We used wood, but we used it on an intimate scale. The planks I used in both the stadium and the toilet are about 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres [in cross-section], the same dimensions as most old Japanese houses.”

Four years after it was launched, has The Tokyo Toilet been a success? The Nippon Foundation recently surveyed people in Shibuya at the various sites and found that satisfaction with public toilets in the area had risen from 44 per cent to 90 per cent, while negative views of them had dropped from 30 per cent to 3 per cent. It seems that toilets can change minds when they’re imaginatively designed, they’re pleasing to the eye, they accommodate everyone equally and they’re meticulously cleaned three times a day.

Sometimes Koji Yanai will drive around Shibuya very early in the morning, just to look at the toilets. He feels a sense of pride and a strong personal connection with them, but considers them a gift to the city and believes they’re now becoming part of the fabric of Tokyo life. Does he have plans to expand the project to other parts of the city?

“The reaction to the project has been positive here in Japan, but it has been much bigger overseas,” he says. “The issues with public toilets in other countries are even bigger than the issues we have in Japan, so
I would like to extend it to other countries, maybe in China, Korea, the US or Australia.”

We could definitely do with more public toilets in Australia, especially ones as unique and beautifully designed as those in The Tokyo Toilet. That said, if the toilets ever make it here, I’ll be telling any overenthusiastic cameramen not to follow me inside.

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