JMTS 013: The Way of the Toilet
"Perfect Days," toilet cleaning as a daily practice, and wise words from Grandma.
It all started when I found out that Japanese actor, film director, and comedian Kitano Takeshi (aka Beat Takeshi) attributes his success in life to cleaning the toilet.
Kitano Takeshi is a pretty tough guy. He’s known for his films about gangsters and assassins. It’s a little hard to picture him scrubbing the john.
But in an oft-quoted interview, Kitano Takeshi downplays his many accomplishments, saying that he’s no more talented than the next guy. He says he basically just does what he wants and it works out well for some reason. Why? Who knows. But more than 30 years ago, his mentor instructed him to clean the toilet, and he’s been doing it ever since, religiously. If he’s in a public park and the toilet is dirty, for example, after he’s done using it, he cleans it. So Kitano’s theory is that maybe the extravagant praise bestowed upon him is actually the result of his practice of cleaning the toilet.
Kitano Takeshi isn’t the only one who puts such stock in toilet cleaning as a kind of spiritual discipline. Other highly successful toilet cleaning champions include Matsushita Konosuke (1894-1989), the founder of Panasonic, who said that cleaning the toilet cultivated humility, and Honda Soichiro (1906-1991), the founder of Honda, who believed that the condition of a toilet could tell you everything you need to know about a family or business.
Surveys indicate that somewhere between 18-25% of Japanese people clean their toilets every day. Meanwhile, I couldn’t find a single American survey about toilet cleaning habits where “daily” was even an option as an answer.
So…what if we’re missing something?
What if the answer to life, the universe and everything is to be found while cleaning the toilet? Didn’t I owe it to myself - and to you, dear reader - to find out?
That’s when I decided I would clean my toilet every single day for a month and see what happened.
~
On the first day of toilet cleaning...let’s just say I was feeling some major resistance. There are no two ways about it: toilets are gross. Was I really going to get up close and personal with my potty every day? As some sort of success mythology-driven self-improvement experiment? Who was I kidding?
As I got down on my hands and knees to scrub the toilet, I started spinning out: What supplies should I use? Was cleaning the toilet every day bad for the environment? You hear about all of these weird problems relating to stuff people flush down the toilet, like reptiles, and medications that end up polluting our lakes and streams. Isn’t it crazy how flushed antiobiotics eventually show up in our groundwater and contribute to antibiotic resistance? And how flushed antidepressants can screw up the reproductive systems of frogs? And what are those things called - fatbergs! - those nasty “masses of congealed grease and personal hygiene products” that are wreaking havoc on the world’s sewer systems?
Yeah. That’s where my mind went. That’s what they call “monkey mind” in meditation circles — restless, distracted, unsettled, ego-driven. I was far, far away from any kind of toilet enlightenment.
To overcome my resistance and remove some pinch points, I decided to make a little kit of supplies to stash under the sink: gloves, microfiber rag, baking soda, eco-friendly spray at the ready. And over the next few days, I started to settle into an easier rhythm.
You know what? Cleaning the toilet really can be quite satisfying. In the same way that cleaning anything is satisfying. Before it was dirty, and now it is clean. As a direct result of my efforts.
My commode was looking pretty good. And then, since I was already down there on my hands and knees, I decided I might as well wipe up the floor. And while I was rinsing my rag at the sink, I figured, why not clean that also? Oh, and I noticed a little toothpaste on the mirror. I went after that, too.
Before I knew it, my entire bathroom was sparkling. This whole daily toilet cleaning thing? I was nailing it.
~
In the wonderful new film Perfect Days, directed by Wim Wenders and nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature, the main character cleans public toilets for a living.
Hirayama, played by the magnificent Koji Yakusho (from Shall We Dance), lives a simple, spartan life, anchored in daily routine. He doesn’t have much, but what he does have he takes care of with respect and devotion.
Lucky for him, the public toilets that he cleans are part of The Tokyo Toilet Project, a group of seventeen brand new starchitect-designed toilets in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. These toilets are public-facing works of art. (The impetus behind the production of the film, it turns out, was basically to bring more attention to the project after the pandemic robbed the toilets of their debut on the world stage during the 2020 Olympics.) The stunning toilets are meant to be a calling card for “Japan's world-renowned hospitality culture.”
"Japan is well appreciated as a clean and beautiful country. When visitors from other countries see the redesigned toilets, I believe people will think of it as part of what makes Japan wonderful." - Tadao Ando, architect
So yes, it’s a bit of an idealized world. But there’s pain and trauma and heartache in the margins of Hirayama’s story. Plenty of people treat him poorly - ignoring him or dismissing him with disgust for cleaning toilets. Even so, he always seems to have this little hint of a smile on his face.
Hirayama’s contentment is anchored in life’s tiny joys, and the pleasures of paying attention. He plays cassette tapes on his daily drive to work. He buys a new paperback every weekend from the dollar bin. He eats his lunch in the park and marvels at the beautiful patterns of light dappling through overhead trees, a phenomenon known in Japanese as 木漏れ日 komorebi.
I aspire to be more like this character. So as I clean my toilet, I try to channel his energy. I try to tap into his quiet aura of humility. I try to really care about doing the best possible job I can do cleaning the toilet.
But, man, he sets a really high bar. The guy uses a gadget like a dentist’s mouth mirror to make sure he’s thoroughly cleaned under the rim. If toilet cleaning nirvana requires that level of commitment, I’m beginning to doubt I’ll ever attain it.
~
About a week in, I faltered.
I started skipping days. I was busy. I made excuses. I rationalized.
Even though I hadn't embarked on the project with the explicit objective of having a cleaner toilet... the situation did sort of beg the question: what's the point of cleaning an already clean toilet?
Clearly, I was lost.
It was around this time that I was chatting with my friend about my failed pursuit of the Way of the Toilet, and she asked me if I had heard of the song The Goddess in the Toilet.
In 2010, singer-songwriter 植村花菜 Uemura Kana released a mega-hit called トイレの神様, Toire no Kamisama, or The Goddess in the Toilet. The song won awards, inspired a book and a TV drama, and amassed 27 million views on Youtube.
The 10-minute ballad is about Uemura’s relationship with her grandmother, whom she lived with as a child. To convince her to do a better job of cleaning the toilet, her grandmother tells her, in the chorus of the song:
Well, well, there’s a beautiful goddess // Who lives in the toilet, my dear // So if you clean the toilet everyday // You can become a beautiful woman, just like the goddess
トイレには それはそれはキレイな // 女神様がいるんやで // だから毎日 キレイにしたら 女神様みたいに // べっぴんさんになれるんやで
Uemura is convinced, and from then on, she polishes the toilet till it gleams. But as the tale unfolds, eventually she and Grandma become estranged. Just when she finally comes home to reunite with her, Grandma passes away. Uemura is filled with remorse, and repeats the chorus a bunch of times, plaintively thanking her grandmother for teaching her about the goddess in the toilet.
In Shinto, Japan's native religion, it is believed that spirits called kami (神) inhabit all things, including the toilet. And in a number of schools of Buddhism, devotions are made to a toilet god called Ususama Myoo, associated with good health, increased prosperity, and purification.
But that’s not really what the song is about. It’s more of a love letter to wise things said by grandmothers. In teaching Uemura to clean the toilet every day, her grandmother is teaching her to take care of her inner life as much as she is teaching her to tend to her surroundings.
There’s a belief in Buddhism that our subjective self and our objective surroundings are inseparable: “oneness of life and its environment.” They are two integral dimensions of a single reality. Therefore, even a toilet is a part of yourself. When you clean the toilet, you are cleaning your mind, wiping away mental dust, polishing your spirit.
In Japan, cleaning isn't framed as a disagreeable or dreaded chore preferably delegated to someone else. It’s an opportunity to purify your heart.
The more I thought about it, the more this started to make sense to me.
My toilet cleaning resolve was restored.
~
I returned to my daily practice with gusto. By cleaning my toilet every day I was sending a message to my unconscious mind that I’m the kind of person who cleans their toilet every day. The kind of person who honors their commitments. Who respects their environment. Who respects themselves. A toilet cleaning quitter? Not I!
Would you believe me if I told you that I started looking forward to cleaning the toilet?
I found that if I started the morning by cleaning the toilet, no matter what else happened later, the day was already a win. It just didn’t feel the same when I did it late in the day as an afterthought.
My attention to detail improved. I got in and around the crevices at the hinge of the lid. To reach all the way back and behind the base, I was practically embracing the throne. Things were getting intimate. I stopped seeing the toilet as vestibule of grossness. I began to see it as my friend.
Then, about three weeks in, something unexpected happened.
I'd gotten up especially early that day, and my husband was still sleeping. The apartment was quiet and peaceful. I knelt at the toilet. I prepared my tools. I wiped off the top of the tank, fascinated by the tiny little bit of dust that had collected there since yesterday.
When suddenly I noticed something I'd never noticed before: my entire body was reflected in the polished, chrome handle of the toilet. Strangely distorted like in a fun house mirror, but all of me nevertheless.
What?! Whoa! How had I never seen my reflection before? There I was. Utterly one with the toilet.
After years of dabbling at meditation, this felt like the closest I’d ever come to a mindfulness epiphany. Instead of monkey minding my way around fatbergs, I was one hundred percent present in the task of polishing the handle of the toilet. My body and mind in the same place at the same time.
~
If you are considering embarking on your own daily toilet cleaning practice, I should probably warn you: you will start to notice dirt and grime everywhere. You will notice it, and you will feel compelled to do something about it. You will wash your windows. You will obsessively wipe away fingerprints. You might even take apart your humidifier - for the first time ever - and clean the gook off the blades of the fan.
Your brain will scan the environment like a sonar for scuzz, noticing, noticing, noticing.
And as a result, your home… how it will sparkle. Your heart… how it will shine.
Will you become beautiful, like a goddess, like Uemura’s grandmother promised in the song?
Try it for yourself and find out.
Perfect Days (2024), directed by Wim Wenders
In Theaters Now (Fandango)
Streaming from March 5, 2024 (Amazon, Apple TV, Vudu)
How often do you clean your toilet? Is there a cleaning task that you find meditative? Or spiritual in some way? Please share in the comments, or reply to this email. Thanks for being here, and for reading an entire essay about toilets!
👋 O genki de ne,
Julia Morrison
Enlightening! Thanks for sharing.