JAPAN:WHEN IT comes to saving energy, the Japanese have much to teach other rich countries, whose leaders descend on Japan next month for a Group of Eight summit.
Energy consumption per person here is about half that in the US, and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slower than anywhere in the industrialised world.
There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging. And nothing embodies the surge quite like the lavatory - a plumbing fixture that has been re-engineered here as an ultra-comfy energy hog.
Japanese lavatories can warm and wash one's bottom, whisk away odours with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out other sounds. They play relaxation music, too. Ave Maria is a favourite.
High-end loos can also sense when someone enters or leaves the bathroom, raising or lowering lids accordingly. Many models have a "learning mode", which allows them to memorise the lavatory schedules of household residents.
These always-on electricity-guzzlers (keeping water warm for bottom-washing devours power) barely existed in Japan before 1980. Now, they are in 68 per cent of homes, accounting for about 4 per cent of household energy consumption. They use more power than dishwashers or clothes dryers.
Lavatories with built-in warmers for bottom-washing first arrived in Japan in the 1970s. They were US-made medical devices for haemorrhoid sufferers. But they took off, becoming the most profitable innovation in the modern history of Japanese bathrooms.
The Japanese are serious about cleanliness. The word for clean - kirei - is also a word for beautiful. People often sweep the street in front of their house, remove their shoes on entering a house, and they shower before bathing. They are sensitive to odours. For all these needs, aversions and desires, superloos fit the bill, as well as catering to the Japanese love of gadgets.
But romance with a high-end toilet is not cheap. Luxury models cost up to $4,000 - plus at least $2.50 a month per loo in higher electricity bills.
The romance, however, continues to bloom, albeit with the intensive mediation of government energy watchdogs, who have begun to monitor the behaviour of the lavatory-smitten masses.
The final report of the Electric Toilet Seats Evaluation Standard Subcommittee noted last year that 23 to 30 per cent of Japanese men now sit while urinating. They do so, the report said, for comfort and for "prevention of urine splash". The report also included findings from the Warm-Water-Shower Toilet Seat Council (an industry group) that women urinate eight times a day, with an average on-seat time of 96 seconds.
The Japanese government is struggling to meet obligations under the Kyoto global warming treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 6 per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.
At the G-8 meeting next month, Japan will be pushing the other member countries to accept mandatory limits on emissions of the gases, which cause global warming.
In the lavatory industry, progress has been impressive, with nearly every manufacturer meeting its 2006 energy-efficiency target.
Toto, Japan's largest loo maker, says that in the past decade it has cut the monthly cost of electricity for its multi-featured loos from $4.69 to $2.59. Almost all of this reduction has come without the involvement of users, according to Kazumi Kasahara, a Toto manager. "We have not heard about customers who turn their toilets off because they want to be green," he said. "What we do hear about are customers who get addicted to these toilets and cannot stop using them." - LA Times/Washington Post service