The built-in bottom washers and pre-warmed seats of Japan’s luxury toilets have become the latest flashpoint with China, as Beijing’s state-run media yesterday launched a thunderous tirade against them.
The Global Times, which is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece People’s Daily, devoted the editorial in both its English and Chinese-language editions to the subject, under the headline: “Popularity of Japanese toilet seats overstated.”
Buying Japanese toilets “makes a mockery of China’s boycott of Japanese goods,” it said.
“That Chinese tourists swamp Japanese stores at a time when the country is facing a sluggish domestic demand is certainly not something to be proud of,” it said.
The two nations are at odds over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), which are also claimed by Taiwan and known as the Senkakus in Japan. China and Japan have repeatedly sent ships and aircraft to the area.
However, despite their political differences, Asia’s two biggest economies have close business ties, and about half a million Chinese tourists visited Japan over this month’s Lunar New Year holiday, spending an estimated US$882 million according to Nomura Securities.
A slight thaw in relations saw the two nations’ leaders meet during a regional summit in November, but tensions remain high with many ordinary Chinese remaining resentful over Japan’s invasion of China during the 1930s and 1940s, events that Chinese media outlets and the CCP regularly recall.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe angered Beijing in 2013 by visiting Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead, including convicted World War II war criminals and 30,304 Taiwanese soldiers.
It was unclear why the Global Times focused its ire on the smallest room, but it might have been triggered by a Beijing Youth Daily article that said the seats were second only to rice cookers in popularity among Chinese tourists to Japan.
The high-tech bathroom accessories, often equipped with multiple water jets, hot-air dryers and automatic lid-raisers, are common throughout Japan and often seen as a status symbol among the Chinese nouveau riche.
The Global Times acknowledged that the toilets’ popularity “is not accidental as they explicitly show the human touch, intelligent design and sophistication of Japanese goods.”
However, it added with disdain: “World-class toilet seats are not what Chinese manufacturers aspire to make.”
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