Written by Emily Gillespie & Nina Strochlic | Photo by Leslie Montgomery

Few things are as universally understood as expressing the need to use the bathroom. It can be conveyed through one-word requests, gestures, or even an entertaining game of charades. Jeff Hanes, a professor of Japanese history at the University of Oregon, has been thrown into many unexpected situations while working and traveling abroad. But until one night in a Japanese home, he had never before needed to worry about the cultural confusion that could arise over ‘doing his business’ while on business.

“Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom,” Jeff Hanes requested. He was seated around a dinner table at a Japanese home. “Now?” the wife of his host asked incredulously. Hanes was taken aback by the question. “Well…yeah,” he replied. She rose from the table without indicating for him to follow and left the room. Twenty minutes later, she returned, this time inviting him to come with her. They got to the bathroom door and she paused, handing him a stack of towels. “When I opened the door, I realized she had drawn me a bath,” recalls Hanes. “She didn’t speak much English, and when I finally conveyed that I meant ‘toilet,’ we all laughed about it.”

A myriad of sentiments revolves around the small room where humans perform what some consider their dirtiest function. But whether it’s an English loo or an outdoor hut, a bathroom comprises much more than wood, ceramic, or cement: Built into these structures is a framework that can be used to decode the practices of another culture. Misunderstandings like the one Hanes experienced are what make the subject of toilets a bit uncomfortable, yet fascinating. Because of its personal nature, going to the bathroom in another part of the world can wind up being a harsh dose of reality, signifying that you are, in fact, far from home. When it comes to using the facilities, culture shock is expressed at its finest.

The most underlying factor of culture that bathroom customs address is sanitation. Cultural views and definitions of sanitation and cleanliness vary so vastly, which can result in shocking and uncomfortable situations. “It is so deeply rooted in us, so cultural, to know what is dirty and what is not,” says Magid Shirzadegan, director of International Student and Scholar Services at the University. Shirzadegan, a native of Iran, interacts with international students coming to study in the United States, which includes dealing with culture shocks like these every day.

In Iran, bathrooms represent a taboo so strong that they often have a separate structure from the main house. The room contains a squatting toilet and a watering can with which to wash. Many bathrooms oftentimes don’t include a sink, as the can is also used to rinse your left hand—the one customarily used to wipe with. Shirzadegan says he keeps bathroom slippers in his house for Iranian guests to use. “You would never, ever go barefoot in the bathroom. It’s the worst thing in the world,” he explains.

The way people wash after using a toilet can also represent a point of discord in adjusting to a new culture. Whether using water, paper, or leaves, depending on the culture and location, personal hygiene falls under the ‘comfort’ category of the bathroom experience. In Iran, people view toilet paper as extremely unclean, and Shirzadegan cites it as a western custom he still dislikes.

In America, toilet paper is a common bathroom accessory, and to see otherwise would be considered somewhat unusual. In places such as Europe and Latin America, people use bidets—toilet-like fixtures that use water to clean the genitals—as a common tool used for personal cleaning. “For me, I think water is more hygienic than toilet paper,” Awab Alrawe says. Alrawe, a native of Baghdad, Iraq, has used both toilet paper and bidets in his country. “For example, when you work in the garden, you wouldn’t go and wipe your hands with a towel afterwards; you go wash your hands. It makes more sense having water than paper,” he says.

For Jack Sim, the sanitation issue goes beyond comfort and cultural practice. He views sanitation as a worldwide problem that has long gone unaddressed. Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, says the elephant in the room labeled “disease” which needed to be discussed and finally addressed. “Mothers tell their kids not to talk about toilets because it’s rude. So the problem becomes an unspeakable taboo,” he says. “Due to long neglect, 2.5 billion people today have no proper sanitation; many of them suffer illness and death due to poor hygiene and flies spreading diarrhea through food.”

WTO, a non-profit organization, aims to improve toilet access and global sanitation. It has created a network and service platform, from which organizations can learn from one another to provide support in creating change in media and government. “Since [its creation], it became a media darling, and people start to find that they too can talk about toilets, and from there, they demand better sanitary conditions,” Sim says.

Dr. Janice Smith also became aware of this global situation on a medical mission in Nicaragua. The cause of many of the diseases she was treating quickly became obvious: A huge part of the diseases in the community were related to poor sanitation, including no clean running water and no solid waste disposal. Although organizations such as Habitat for Humanity had dug deep water wells and various types of latrines, the population was not responsive. “They didn’t have enough of them, and most people were not using them,” she says. The danger in their practice of simply going in the field or in a pit is that leaves it the population more exposed to diarrhea and parasitic diseases. During her time in Nicaragua, Smith encouraged people to use the community toilets that were available to them to promote health and curb the spread of disease.

Strangely enough, Sim has found that in China, the practice of smoking has been linked to bathroom use. “Smoking is a very common habit among men. How did it start? Normally, when the toilet is smelly, you can handle it better if you smoke while using the toilet,” he says. Sim is an advocate of a study on the behavior, saying he “suspects this contributes to smoking habits. I am certain they will discover that good toilets reduce smoking and incidents of cancer.”

Beyond sanitation, toilets can also reflect more than just views of cleanliness. They can also be indicators of the events the country is experiencing. The history of Japanese toilets is an excellent example. University Japanese instructor Yoko O’Brien explains that western-style toilets replaced traditional squatting toilets in Japan as a direct product of post-war occupation. “After World War II, people started using chairs—they never had before,” she says. Although traditional squat toilets are still used, primarily in rural areas of Japan, western models are becoming increasingly abundant in cities following this introduction.

The best available toilet in a village in Bangladesh. Photo courtesy of the the World Toilet Organization.

Today, Japanese toilets have evolved in accordance with Japan’s fast-paced technological advances. In a country that leads the world in manufacturing technology and robotics, its toilets have similarly followed suit. Hanes describes these newer Japanese toilets, although similar in form as the western counterparts, as “incredibly sophisticated toilets with controls that look like they could be a panel in a jet plane.” A dashboard of buttons has become common on Japanese toilets, and Kohei Shibuya, native of Japan, says that these high-tech additions are all for convenience. “When I enter the restroom, the cover [of the toilet] automatically opens, and when I am finished, they flush automatically,” he says. The bathrooms also have a bidet washing function with degrees of pressure, as well as controls to create music or background noise. These built-in functions demonstrate the importance the culture places on modesty, he says. “The idea is that it’s a private function,” Hanes says. “You don’t want to share all sights and sounds with your neighbors.”

In Iraq, both eastern and western-style toilets exist, which reflects the economic differences and the levels of resistance to change in the country. Alrawe says that in the northern region near the capital, the country is rich and the bathrooms consist mostly of western-style toilets. However, in poorer areas like the south, squat toilets with a sewage system that usually lead to a river, or even the streets, are commonplace. “[Squat toilets] exist for people who are not accustomed to the new ones, for people that didn’t change with time,” Alrawe says. He says that, until 1980, the southern part of Iraq had not been introduced to commodities such as blue jeans and soap. “If you weren’t introduced to jeans, you wouldn’t be exposed to the [western)] toilets,” he says.

The difference in economies also provides insight into a country’s toilet system. According to the United Nations World Health Organization, a little more than half of the world’s population has access to running water in their homes. With this in mind, it is easy to understand that economic structures often account for the variation in toilet structures. Alex Matu Muvua of Nairobi, Kenya, says he has seen all kinds of toilets that correlate to poor or rich economic situations. He says that because he went to boarding school and lived in a middle-class household, the kinds of toilets he grew up using were like those in the United States. “Then I’ll take you to my grandma’s house. My mom brought me up in a modern way, but my grandma lives kind of a traditional life. She lives in a hut, and over there, they use pit latrines,” he says. He describes pit latrines as a mud structure that sits atop a ten-foot-deep hole. The latrines are either fashioned with a constructed seat, or no seat at all. And when toilet paper isn’t available, Muyua says, people sometimes use leaves.

Across the river from his school in Nairobi sits the city’s largest slum, Kibera. “This is where the poor people go to live, and since the streets are really packed, so there’s no room for pit latrines … so they had to figure out a way for how everyone’s going to come poop and do all that,” he says. The solution: flying toilets. No, not a porcelain chair with wings—though it has been depicted as such in many satirical cartoons in newspapers—but a system of defecating in a plastic bag and throwing it as far away from you as possible. “They bend over, poop, close the bag, and throw it,” Muvua says. “So if you so happen to be walking, and the bag lands, plop,” he says, grimacing, with a disgusted look on his face. He goes on to explain that the practice has led to the spread of many diseases, such as diarrhea and typhoid.

Although the region does have community toilets where you can pay a few cents to use a more sanitary toilet, many people can’t afford to use the facilities. “Some people make [the equivalent of] twenty dollars a month; they just can’t afford it,” he says. Muvua describes the United States as “perfect,” when it comes to its view of sanitation and toilets, largely because the economic stability allows everyone access to a sanitary toilet. “People here are sanitary. This is heaven; I love it. Even a homeless person can get access at a café, bus station, the mall, wherever. In Kenya, it’s just not the case,” he says.

Just as the availability of toilets can suggest a country’s current economic state, it can also be indicative of its outlook on waste. In the United States, a reported fifteen million trees go into the production of the thirty-six billion rolls of toilet paper used each year. To combat such waste, environmentally conscience paper companies such as LetsGoGreen, offers toilet paper made from 100 percent recycled fiber, packaged in entirely recyclable material.

Japanese toilets have many functions, including a bidet as well as background sounds to muffle unpleasant noises. Photo by apc33

Some cultures have created a new use for their waste, making it more of a tool for their benefit. Many countries, including Vietnam, shape their bathrooms around the concept of reusing waste to aid agriculture. “The main reason that we made the Vietnamese have one-hole type of bathrooms is that we want to reuse the solid waste because we do farming,” says Nguyet Nguyen, a native of Vietnam. “The country is mainly poor, so people have to think of every possible way to reuse and recycle.” Water, she says, goes first to farming.

People in other regions, such as the town in Nicaragua in which Dr. Smith worked, are attempting to implement this practice of compost toilets. Composting latrines were built in the area to strengthen agriculture with fertilization, while encouraging people to use them as a more hygienic alternative. “They’re very effective, and they make great compost. I must say when they started using those latrines, the greenery and the gardens around the complex were impressive,” Dr. Smith says.

Ranging from a hole in the ground to an elaborate, multi-functioning unit, toilets say a lot about a people. Although a taboo topic by most standards, toilets ultimately offer a unique, inescapable view of culture. So, the next time you’re confronted with the sight of an unfamiliar toilet, take a moment to “give a crap.” Sit down, relax, and appreciate the nuances of toilet culture.