There were three main types of toilet (benjo 便所, lit. ‘excreta place’ or ‘evacuation place’) in pre-modern Japan: the wet or flush type (suisen-shiki 水洗式), the dry type (kan-shiki 乾式), and the ‘retaining’ type (choryū-shiki 貯留式).
Though rare, there could be found in mountainous areas until recent times the ‘prototype wet type’ (genshi suisen-shiki 原始水洗式) toilet, in which the water from a spring-fed pipe (kakehi 筧) was used to flush waste ‘down the valley’, but because human waste (fun-nyо̄ 糞尿, lit. ‘faeces-urine’) was used as fertiliser in farming villages, the overwhelming majority of minka toilets were of the ‘retaining’ or ‘retain and ladle’ type (choryū-kumitori-shiki 貯留汲取り式).
Exterior view of an example of a ‘retaining’ type (choryū-shiki 貯留式) toilet. A pot called a koga-tsubo (コガ壷), covered behind pieces of board, is dug in beside the niwa entrance. The pot collects both toilet waste and bathwater, all to be used as fertiliser. From the Hakogi house (Hakogi-ke 箱木家), an Important Cultural Property in Hyо̄go Prefecture. This photograph was taken before the house was relocated and restored to its original form; the toilet shown here no longer exists.
Plan of the Hakogi house before its relocation and restoration. The bathroom (furo-ba ふろば) and toilet can be seen in the bottom left corner of the earth-floored utility area (niwa にわ), between it and the ‘living room’ (omote おもて) and its ‘verandah’ (en 縁, unlabelled).
Though not found in minka, an example of the dry-type toilet is the ‘sand toilet’ (suna-secchin 砂雪隠). In this type, the waste is ‘laid’ directly on a floor of pebbles or sand, sprinkled with sand, and taken away to be buried elsewhere. The suna-secchin is closely associated with the tea ceremony (chaseki 茶席), where it eventually became a purely ornamental feature of the inner tea garden, with the actual functional toilet being in the outer garden.
A ‘sand toilet’ (suna-secchin 砂雪隠) in a teahouse garden.
Exterior view of the suna-secchin hut.
Plan of a suna-secchin. Labelled are the door (?ki-to,？木戸), stone door sill (to-zuri-ishi 戸すり石), windows (mado 窓), sand (suna 砂), ‘dust hole’ (chiri-ana ちり穴), the left foot stone (ashi-kake-ishi 足かけ石, lit. ‘foot place stone’), right foot stone (mae-ishi 前石, lit. ‘front stone’), ‘urine use stop’ (shо̄yо̄-kaeshi 小用返し) stone, and ‘rear stop’ (ura-gaeshi うら返し) stone. The structure is two tatami mats in area.
The name secchin (雪隠, lit. ‘snow hide’), alternatively senchi or senchin, is said to have originated in Buddhist temples. Toilets at Zen temples are called either seijо̄/seijin/seichin (西浄 ‘west clean’), by association with the seijо̄, the place where meditation practice, training, or rites are conducted, or tо̄su (東司 ‘east official’), by association with the tо̄su, the entrance to the seijо̄. Other names for the toilet used at temples include ryūsoku (流廁 ‘flow toilet’) and soku-in (廁院 ‘toilet institution’).
Names for the wet-type toilet include kawaya (廁), which derives from the meanings ‘river hut’ (kawa-ya 川屋) or ‘side hut’ (kawa-ya 側屋), a reminder of when people would relieve themselves in huts built over bodies of flowing water (ryūsui 流水), a method which tended to be more common in the southern areas of the country.
Interior view of the kawaya (厠) of the Aidzu Buke-Yashiki (会津武家屋敷), the villa residence of an important samurai in Aidzu-Wakamatsu (会津若松), Fukushima Prefecture. This sophisticated toilet is something of a hybrid: it is a kawaya in the sense that is a ‘drop style’ toilet, though unlike a true kawaya it is not built over flowing water; it is also a suna-secchin toilet, in the sense that the ‘deposit’ is made on sand, though here the sand bed is portable, as as seen in the following photograph.
Exterior view of the same kawaya as in the previous image, showing the sand box into which the waste is deposited; the box can be conveniently wheeled out and the waste taken away for burial. Replacement sand is stored in the bays either side of the sand box.
In the Hokuriku region there are the names kanjo or kanze, which have been interpreted to mean ‘free time place’ or ‘relaxing place’ (kanjo 閑所, lit. ‘leisure place’), although it has also been claimed that they probably derive instead from the Chinese guàn chǔ (灌処, lit. ‘irrigation processing’). Other names of a euphemistic nature include te-arai (手洗い ‘hand washing’), chо̄zu (手水 ‘hand water’) or chо̄zuba (手水場 ‘hand water place’), shian-jo (思案所 ‘contemplating place’), and bunbetsu-jo (分別所 ‘separate place’).
In the Kinki region, there is the slang name kо̄ya-san (高野山, ‘Mount Kо̄ya’ - the home of Shingon Buddhism, in Wakayama Prefecture), which is a pun on the meaning ‘dropping paper/hair’ (kami wo otosu 紙/髪を落とす). Many other dialect names for the toilet exist, including kо̄ka (後架, ‘after frame’), go-fujо̄ (御不浄 ‘honourable unclean’), habakari (はばかり ‘modesty/discretion’), go-yо̄ba (御用場 ‘honourable use place’), and ike-game (埋甕 ‘fill up pot’).