When it comes to saving energy, the Japanese have much to teach the United States and other rich countries, whose leaders are to descend in Japan this month for the Group of Eight summit.
Energy consumption per person in Japan is about half that in the US, and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slower than anywhere in the industrialised world.
There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging.
And nothing embodies the surge quite like the toilet — a plumbing fixture that has been re-engineered there as an ultra-comfy energy drainer.
Japanese toilets can warm and wash one’s bottom, whisk away odours with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out potty sounds.
They play relaxation music, too. Ave Maria is a favourite.
High-end toilets can also sense when someone enters or leaves the bathroom, raising or lowering their lids accordingly.
Many models have a “learning mode”, which allows them to memorise the lavatory schedules of household members.
These always-on electricity-guzzlers (keeping water warm for bottom-washing devours power) barely existed in Japan before 1980.
Now they are in 68 per cent of homes, accounting for about 4 per cent of household energy consumption. They use more power than dishwashers or clothes dryers.
“For hygiene-conscious Japanese, the romance with these toilets is equivalent to the American romance with the Hummer,” said Philip Clapp, deputy managing director of the environmental group at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington DC.
Yen for hygiene
Toilets with built-in warmers for bottom-washing first arrived in Japan in the 1970s. They were US-made medical devices for haemorrhoid sufferers.
But they took off, becoming the most profitable innovation in the modern history of Japanese bathrooms, according to toilet makers.
The Japanese are serious about cleanliness. The word for clean, kirei, is also a word for beautiful. People often sweep the street in front of their house.
They remove their shoes upon entering a house. They shower before bathing. They are sensitive to odours.
For all these needs, aversions and desires, super toilets fit the bill, while catering to the Japanese love of gadgets.
In addition, Japanese houses are often small and, in the winter, chilly. A warm, comfortable, musical and hygienic seat in the bathroom expands living space.
But as with a Hummer, romance with a high-end toilet is not cheap. Luxury models cost up to $4,000 — plus at least $2.50 a month per toilet in higher electricity bills.
But unlike the Hummer, which few Americans are now buying and which General Motors may soon stop making, romance with toilets continues to bloom in Japan, albeit with the intensive mediation of government energy watchdogs, who have begun to monitor the behaviour of the toilet-smitten masses.
The final report of the Electric Toilet Seats Evaluation Standard Sub-committee noted last year that 23 to 30 per cent of Japanese men now sit while urinating.
They do so, the report said, for comfort and for “prevention of urine splash”.
The Japanese government is struggling to meet obligations under the Kyoto global warming treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 6 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.
At the G-8 meeting, Japan will be pushing the US and other member countries to accept mandatory limits on emissions of the gases, which cause global warming.
Since the oil shock of 1973, no industrialised country has been more effective in squeezing more affluence out of less imported energy than Japan, experts say.
Relative to its economy, Japan consumes only a third as much oil as it did 35 years ago.
Industry has led the charge, more than doubling output while using less energy than it did in 1973.
To make a tonne of steel, Japanese steel manufacturers use 20 per cent less fuel than their counterparts in the US and 50 per cent less than those in China.
In the toilet industry, progress has been impressive, with nearly every manufacturer meeting its 2006 energy-efficiency target, according to government surveys.
Toto, Japan’s largest toilet maker, says that in the past decade, it has cut the monthly cost of electricity for its multi-featured toilets from $4.69 to $2.59.
Almost all of it without the toilet users’ involvement, Kazumi Kasahara, a Toto manager, says.
“We have not heard about customers who turn their toilets off because they want to be green,” he said.
“What we do hear about are customers who get addicted to these toilets and can’t stop using them.”
