"The Big Necessity" on the World of Waste

[Mulboyne]

I'm reading "The Big Necessity" by Rose George at the moment. Her original subtitle for the British edition is "Adventures in the World of Human Waste" but this has become the more urgent "The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters" for the US edition.

The whole book is worth a read but, if you don't fancy it, I can at least recommend you browse chapter two if you come across a copy in a book store. This covers the author's visit to Japan to discover the origins of the washlet. She visits both TOTO and Inax and learns from the latter that they lost the initiative in the market, despite coming up with the basic idea first, because TOTO ran a series of inspired TV ads featuring Jun Togawa while Inax featured a gorilla sitting on a toilet bowl. From the book: "'We don't know why we had the gorilla,' says Inax's senior communications executive. He has been nodding politely for most of the meeting , but the gorilla story unearths a lovely giggle from inside his composure. 'We can't even remember the slogan. But I do remember that he was wearing dungarees'".

TOTO:

[YT]QmL_wWCmL5s[/YT]

Inax (I can't see the dungarees):

[YT]UaOdP1D_B30[/YT]

[YT]k0I9MZRJqSw[/YT]

George writes that it is remarkable how "a nation of pit latrines" where people "defecated by squatting" and "did not use water to cleanse themselves but paper or stone or sticks" came to develop the most advanced toilets in the world in only a few decades. She says it is "the equivalent of persuading a country that drove on the left in horse-drawn carriages to move to the right and drive a Ferrari instead"

George has also dug out a quotation from the author Junichiro Tanizaki which is brand new to me. He wrote about visiting a privy over a river where "the solids discharged from my rectum went tumbling through several tens of feet of void, grazing the wings of butterflies and the heads of passers-by".

The chapter reveals how TOTO gathered data on the average location and angle of people's anuses and also looks at the importance of developing artificial crap to test a toilet's flushing ability. You can also read about the efforts of TOTO to sell the Washlet in America and how the world is divided between people who routinely wash with water and those who use paper. In 1964, a British physician surveyed the underpants of 940 men and found "faecal contamination in nearly all of them that ranged from 'wasp-coloured' stains to 'frank massive faeces'. This led the doctor to complain that "a high proportion of the population are prepared to cry aloud about footling matters of uncleanliness such as a tomato sauce stain on a tablecloth, whilst they luxuriate on a plush seat in their faecally stained pants".

[Greji]

This led the doctor to complain that "a high proportion of the population are prepared to cry aloud about footling matters of uncleanliness such as a tomato sauce stain on a tablecloth, whilst they luxuriate on a plush seat in their faecally stained pants".

Ya gotta be shitting me!

[kurohinge1]

. . . [author Junichiro Tanizaki] wrote about visiting a privy over a river . . .

Ah ... the joys of living upstream.

[Mulboyne]

...George has also dug out a quotation from the author Junichiro Tanizaki which is brand new to me. He wrote about visiting a privy over a river where "the solids discharged from my rectum went tumbling through several tens of feet of void, grazing the wings of butterflies and the heads of passers-by".

Tanizaki would presumably love the following story which, by happy coincidence, has just appeared
:

Yomiuri: Station toilet waste ran into river for 40 years

Untreated excrement from toilets at a train station in Kita Ward, Tokyo, has been flowing straight into a nearby river for more than 40 years, according to a Tokyo metropolitan government investigation. The Tokyo branch of East Japan Railway Co. closed the passenger toilets at the south exit of JR Oji Station on March 5 after the metropolitan government's sewage bureau notified it of the problem. Residents have complained for years about the stink of the Shakujiigawa river--a government-designated class 1 river that flows into the Sumidagawa river, according to the ward government. Although human waste from the toilets was supposed to travel along pipes to a treatment works, the bureau found during a March 2 inspection of the Shakujiigawa rainwater drains that untreated excrement from the toilets flows into rainwater drains.

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: Station toilet waste ran into river for 40 years

JR East has done it again. It appears that toilet water from offices at their Makuhari rolling stock depot has been flowing directly into the Hamadagawa river for the last 27 years because it was mistakenly connected to a rain overflow pipe instead of a sewage pipe.