Hygiene and humanity explored through Tokyo's famous toilets

Featured at the 2023 Paris Photo Fair, the Tokyo Toilet Project is a reflection on our relationship with sanitation inspired by the Japanese capital's world-famous loos.

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A performance inspired by the Tokyo Toilet Project at Paris Photo Fair 2023. © RFI

Visitors to the Paris Photo Fair at the Grand Palais Ephémère last month found themselves looking at rolls and rolls of toilet paper.

The custom-made paper, made from recycled cardboard, was printed with photographs by Daido Moriyama, who documented public bathrooms in the Shibuya district of Tokyo as they were reimagined by well-known designers. 

The Tokyo Toilet installation at Paris Photo Fair in November 2023. © RFI

For the occasion, director Toshihiro Nobori led a series of performances in which actors in overalls cleaned up the stand every day.

"This performance is strongly influenced by the work of writer and artist Shūji Terayama, and by the world of the photographer Daido Moriyama," Nobori told RFI.

"Moriyama used to work with Terayama. He made theatre in the 1960s and '70s – it's a bit burlesque and underground."

World-famous toilets

The Tokyo Toilet Project saw 16 architects and designers, mainly Japanese, redesign public toilets in 17 locations across Shibuya between 2020 and 2023.

A transparent toilet designed by Shigeru Ban at Haru-no-Ogawa Community Park in the Shibuya district of Tokyo on 19 August 2020. The clear doors become opaque when the lock is turned. © AFP / PHILIP FONG

Japan's famously comfortable and sometimes hi-tech toilets are a symbol of its world-renowned hospitality culture. 

The Tokyo Toilet Project also inspired German director Wim Wenders, whose latest film, "Perfect Days", tells the story of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Leading man Kōji Yakusho won the Best Actor Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival for his performance.

Japanese architect Tadao Ando looks at the uniform of an employee in front of a public toilet designed by him ahead of "The Tokyo Toilet art project with Wim Wenders" event in Tokyo on May 11, 2022, to announce launching a film about an urban renewal project involving top architects to renovate toilets in downtown Shibuya. AFP - BEHROUZ MEHRI

Read also:

• Oscar-nominated 'Perfect Days' is 'not about toilets', director Wim Wenders says