HONG KONG – Public restrooms around the world have a reputation for being dark, dirty and dangerous. Tokyo recently unveiled new toilets in two public parks aimed at addressing those concerns.
For one thing, they are brightly lit and colorful.
For another, they are transparent.
This way the logic goes, those who have to go can check the cleanliness and safety of the steels without running in or touching anything.
Japan has long experimented with toilets, resulting in lids that open automatically and close and seats that heat up. But the new steels – designed by Shigeru Ban, the Pritzker award-winning architect – are made from an opacity-changing “smart glass” already used in offices and other buildings to provide privacy when needed.
The toilets were installed in the capital of Japan this month, along with a nationwide campaign to phase out the city’s old-fashioned public toilets ahead of the now-delayed Summer Games. Decorated in front of a cluster of trees in the Shibuya district, the stables stand out like a Mondrian painting, with tinted walls with colors such as mango, watermelon, lime, violent and teaspoonful.
When properly occupied and locked up, the tinted glass toilet bowls become matte and opaque. When the door is unlocked, an electric current directs the crystals in the glass to let more light through, creating a transparent effect. The toilets were presented as another futuristic and aesthetically pleasing example of technological advancement of the country.
The reviews were mixed.
“I’m worried it’s going to be transparent because of a malfunction,” a social media user using the Twitter handle @yukio wrote in a widely circulated post.
“It will take time to get used to the idea,” said Ming Cheng, a London-based architect. wrote on Twitter. But he gave it a “thumbs up.”
Serah Copperwhite, a technology worker based in a district south of Tokyo, said that although they normally avoid public restrooms, they would be more inclined to use the new ones because they appeared bright and clean. “I trust science,” Ms Copperwhite, 28, said in a telephone interview Wednesday, addressing concerns on social media about the reliability of smoothing technology.
Lawyers have long called on the Japanese national government to make brick and mortar toilets in public spaces more attractive and accessible to residents and tourists. Some public bathrooms in Tokyo, especially train stations, do not have hand soap. A nursery school in southern Japan stopped taking children to a city park last year because they were repulsed by the flies in the stables. The school chose instead to use a park with Western-style flush toilets.
More than 300 toilets were refurbished from 2017 to 2019, according to the Japan Tourism Agency. For this reason, 40 percent of the country’s public toilets consisted of toilets instead of Western-style commands. The government had tried to phase them out for the Olympic Games, which have been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But while some appreciate the advanced technology of the new toilets, some Tokyo residents said they were misplaced in exposed public spaces and might fit better somewhere else.
“I’m not willing to risk my privacy because someone wants to make a fancy toilet,” Sachiko Ishikawa, a 32-year-old writer and translator, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday from Tokyo.
Ms Ishikawa said she was concerned that human error would make it too easy for bathroom users to expose themselves unintentionally. The transparent structure could also make them more vulnerable to attackers, she said.
“They could wait for you when you go out to the bathroom,” she said. “That the argument of protection does not hold for me.”
Tokyo’s transparent toilets are not the first in the world. In Switzerland, designer Olivier Rambert unveiled glass bathrooms in 2002, demonstrably helping drug users when they overdose and need medical care. He installed a controversial security feature in two frosted glass toilet glasses in the city of Lausanne that automatically opened the doors and became transparent when sensors detected no movement for 10 minutes.
Other countries have other problems dealing with public bathrooms.
South Korea has been plagued by a proliferation of small cameras placed surprisingly in public restrooms, as well as locker rooms in shops and hotels. The problem became so serious that in 2018, the government in Seoul, the capital, appointed 8,000 workers to inspect the city’s public bathrooms.
Two billion people, or about a quarter of the world’s population, do not have access to toilets or latrines, according to data published by the World Health Organization in 2019. For World Toilet Day in 2015, a non-profit organization installed in New York a flushable toilet surrounded by one-way mirrors overlooking Washington Square Park to simulate the experience of immersing yourself in the public view.
Organizers said 200 people visited the stall during the course of the day. Some of them later said that they felt uncomfortable, even though they knew they could not be seen from the outside.
In Japan, the Nippon Foundation has plans to install toilets next year designed by other leading architects at 17 locations. But Thalia Harris, a freelance writer who lived in Tokyo for seven years, said she did not see the project as a practical solution to security concerns.
“Personally, I think this will make people feel even more uncomfortable, especially for women,” Ms Harris, 29, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
She said she would continue to use the public bathrooms in Tokyo train stations, despite the lack of hand soap. She always brings her own, especially because of the outbreak of coronavirus.
“I want them to address that before they have these particular magical new toilets,” she said.
