OK, it being sunday, IFC is showing the ubiquitous samurai movie.
It struck me that I keep reading how the prevalent bathroom facilities are squat toilets. That being said, what did/do they do if the person has a lower body condition that makes movement like squatting and getting back up pretty much impossible … historically and currently.
I suppose currently you can just find a western style sitting toilet, but what about historically?
I would love to travel in Japan, Vietnam, China and Thailand, but am sort of intimidated by the whole squat toilet thing, but that could be partially remedied by only staying in western style hotels …
Well, to touch on your last concern, squat toilets are disappearing from Japan. You find them now in homes built before the '70s and never modernized (rare), hole-in-the-wall bars from before the '90s, and train stations way out in the boonies (and therefore low on the parent company’s priority list).
The current generation of younglings are growing up terrified at the thought of using a sit-down toilet that isn’t equipped a heated seat and electronic bidet. Their reaction to a squat toilet is probably what an American’s would be to an outhouse with a corn cob.
Now that I think about it, Kenzaburo Oe had a character in his book The Silent Cry who was morbidly obese (it was set in a rural village in the late '60s/early '70s). A minor plot point was her family ordering a special stool that fit over the squat toilet so it could be used like a western toilet. I think before that she either struggled as best she could or has her kids help her up. If these kind of stools were available by mail order then presumably other disabled people were using them as well.
The first thing to consider is that this movement is just less likely to be handicapped. With Americans, we rarely squat. So when we get older and things start breaking down, that is one of the first things we stop being able to do easily. Many Asians squat pretty often in daily life- when waiting around/working/etc. So these muscles stay strong and well practiced even as people age. Another thing is that the elderly in Asia in general just seem more spry. Every old person I know in China takes an afternoon walk with the grandkids and another long walk in the evening. My host grandmother’s daily walk was 5k around the track!
As for actual injury, I imagine you can get supports. You can also pretty easily buy fold up seat contraptions. I’ve seen them in local marketplaces.
Really, the squat toilet isn’t a big deal once you’ve done it a few times. Most people even come to prefer it in public bathrooms- it’s much cleaner than sitting down on a seat. The trick is to put your weight on your heels. Most Americans squat on the balls of their feet and this is shaky and uncomfortable. Anyway, even our seventy year old volunteers eventually got the hang out it. And even in more remote areas of China, most tourist-class hotels are going to have western toilets, though most restaurants will not. Don’t let this be the thing that stops you!
I’ll second the “east asians have healthier lifestyles”.
I spent two weeks in Indonesia and the only obese people I saw were westerners. Now, I know that two weeks and two islands (four if you count layovers in HK and Taipei) aren’t enough to judge an entire continent, but overall the people I saw there were slim and healthy compared to the average american.
I also didn’t see squat toilets except out in the boonies and in older buildings. A restaurant in Jakarta (my fiancee’s parents took me there, I don’t recall the name or address of the place) had a handrail installed on the wall by the squat toilet, but overall they seem to be on their way out.
I can definitely say in my area the average person’s lifestyle is much healthier. There is a strong emphasis on physical fitness. Most people participate in sports on a regular basis. At night the whole city turns into parents playing badminton on the sidewalks with their kids and old women doing synchronized dancing. Students are expected to participate in two different sporting activities daily. There are public exercise facilities near every residential area. And there are fruit stands with a huge variety of fruit on every corner. I can’t walk outside without someone giving me an apple or an orange. To my eyes it seems like everyone is buying fruit constantly. Really, the ration of fruit stands to other businesses seems to be about one to one. People get a long lunch break so they can have a home cooked meal and a nap. The food is oily, but it involves lots of vegetables and a variety of food.
What is with you people automatically thinking the other guy does it better?
Is it just some sort of knee jerk that the US always has it wrong?
I do agree about our fat American asses, though…
**CHINA **
About 67% of men smoke, and 4% of women.
Among youths, about a third of male teens smoke and nearly 8% of females.
One of every three cigarettes consumed worldwide is smoked in China.
Smoking will kill about a third of all young Chinese men alive (under 30 years).
About 3,000 people die every day in China due to smoking.
There are more than 300 million Chinese smokers - more than the entire US population. They consume an estimated 1.7 trillion cigarettes per year - or 3 million cigarettes every minute.
China is the world’s largest tobacco producer, accounting for about a quarter of the global tobacco leaf production.
China used to be closed to tobacco multinationals. But in the last two decades, with the opening up of the Chinese economy, multinationals have been aggressively fighting for a piece of the Chinese market, seen as a “prize” market.
In 1990, 68% of male physicians were smokers and 65% of teachers.
Smoking contributes to four of the five leading causes of death in China today.
In 1993, WHO estimated that while China gained $5 billion in tobacco taxes, the country lost $7.8 billion in productivity and additional health care costs.
A study in Minhang district found smokers spent an average of 60% of their personal income and 17% of household income on cigarettes.
In Hong Kong, tobacco companies spent an estimated $63 million on all forms or advertising and promotion in 1995.
Japan
About 51% of men smoke in Japan - this figure has dropped from the 1980s, but it is still very high for a developed nation.
Prevalence of smoking among women, once considered almost taboo, has risen dramatically in the last decade to nearly 10%.
Japan’s Finance Ministry is a major shareholder in Japan Tobacco, a multinational.
A survey in the early 1990s found that 44% of male physicians smoke in Japan.
With 500,000 cigarette vending machines, the young can easily buy cigarettes.
It’s estimated that about one in eight deaths is due to smoking, (about 100,000 deaths a year). Smoking may also contribute to four of the five leading causes of death.
Lung cancer is the leading cancer, with more than 50,000 deaths a year.
More Japanese men die of lung cancer than suicide. The rate of lung cancer deaths is 46 per 100,000 people while the suicide rate is 30 per 100,000.
Japan has some of the weakest anti-tobacco laws for a developed nation, with few smoke-free public areas. *
On the squat/healthy toilet front: a lotta really smart people came out of squat-toilet homes, and the smarter they were, the faster they came out.
There are reasons beyond obesity that squatting could be impossible: people have degenerative bone diseases, muscle diseases, nerve diseases. This doesn’t have to be a discussion of fat vs. thin.
What? I’ve lived in China for six months and spent three of those living with a Chinese family. There is nothing “automatic” or “knee jerk” about my observations. I’ve spent the last two and a half years serving my country. So I really wouldn’t go around accusing me of some kind of anti-Americanism. I’m not working my butt off for six bucks a day for nothing. It’s not a freaking attack on America to say that once in a great while China gets something right, even if the are teh ev1l.
Smoking is a problem. And the air pollution doesn’t help. But remember 1 in 5 Americans will die of smoking related illnesses. The numbers here really are way out there, but that doesn’t change that in other aspects (and among women and older people) most people get daily exercise and eat a healthy diet, something Americans have been failing miserably at.
Vietnam and Cambodia have a mix of toilet styles. As you say, a hotel catering to non-locals will have Western-style toilets.
FWIW, when I lived in the middle east a few decades ago there were a fair number of squats in places like the big markets, but Western-style elsewhere.
I see that you caught me in a surly mood. I will admit that’s a statistical likelihood, even at Christmastime. My apologies.
I was making a not-so-subtle point that admonishing a population to learn something from a country that may eat a healthful diet but smokes like chimneys goes over about effectively as a nation of drunkards reminding the world to wear seatbelts.
I love China, by the way, and have visited there purely for the recreation of it.
I spent two months in Japan about 10 years. I was 60 at the time. Being male, squat toilets didn’t bother me for pissing. Defecation was another matter. Only one place I stayed in had squat toilets and there I shamelessly used the handicapped stall.
One hotel I stayed in (the Transport Hotel in Kumamoto) had (what is failry typical for hotels in Japan) bathroom modules, completely prefabricated bathrooms with western toilets. What was amusing was that above the toilet paper rolls was a stick figure diagram showing a man standing and pissing with seat raised and another showing an androgynous figure sitting with only the lid raised. Obviously instructions for people unfamiliar with western toilets. Not once did I see one of these heated bidet toilets, so that must have happened in the laat ten years.
Morocco has squat toilets, even in the major ferry and train stations. The actual squatting didn’t bother me. The bigger problem was the lack of toilet paper (you’re supposed to wash yourself with the faucet and your hand, and this being Morocco, there is no soap to follow up) and the smell. I think most of those toilets didn’t have a plumbing system underneath, just a hole.
Not necessarily only train stations out in the boonies. I was in Tokyo in 2002 and the Shibuya station still had at least one squat stall.
No TP either–if you travel in Tokyo and random people on the sidewalk are handing our packets of kleenex with advertising on them, Take Them. You will probably find a use before the end of the day.
For the record, you don’t have to be in East Asia or a third-world country to encounter squat toilets. I found one in Paris. (Luckily I only had to pee.)