In current models, the water spray is kept at a precise 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature the company describes as “warm but not surprising.” Toto sold another 10 million Washlets between 2019 and mid-2022 and has maintained a similar pace of sales since. Its all-time Washlet sales now exceed 60 million.
The rise of Toto Washlets makes sense in the cultural context of Japan, said Masako Shirakura, an industry analyst.
In contrast to Western countries, where toilets are sometimes mocked and generally accepted as being dirty, toilets tend to be more respected in Japan, Ms. Shirakura said. This traces back to a belief in Japan that gods or spirits reside in all things, even household objects like toilets, she said.
Japan has also built a brand of capitalism, Ms. Shirakura said, that seeks to transform even minor inconveniences of modern life into business opportunities. This is evident in heated toilet seats, self-filling bathtubs and notebooks with ringed spines that flatten to avoid poking one’s hands while writing.
“Japan has a very strong culture of endlessly challenging these types of things, and that’s why it has been able to evolve and perfect things like Washlets,” Ms. Shirakura said.
Toto-style bidet toilets first spread to Japan’s neighbors, including South Korea and Taiwan. After they expanded to China in 1994, the country quickly became Toto’s top overseas market, but sales outside Asia remained elusive.
When Toto began selling Washlets in the United States in 1989, it encountered many of the same hurdles it faced early on in Japan.
The company was shut out of magazines and upscale malls that were reluctant to run advertisements for toilets, said Mr. Tamura, the president of Toto. He recalls a 2007 backlash in New York from a Washlet billboard in Times Square displaying a row of naked backsides.
By the late 2010s, Toto had built an American sales network for its Washlets, using local business partnerships, listings on Amazon and Costco store shelves. However, it was having to rely mostly on word-of-mouth marketing, and demand lagged. Toto’s annual sales in its Americas housing equipment business were stuck under $300 million — less than half of its Chinese proceeds at the time.
The company saw a big shift when the Covid-19 pandemic started in 2020.
During nationwide lockdowns, Americans struggling to get toilet paper began flocking to Washlets. In 2020, Toto Washlet sales in North America nearly doubled from the year prior. That boom has carried forward, even after toilet paper stocks have replenished, Mr. Tamura said.
Toto has also benefited from record numbers of tourists descending on Japan and becoming converts. Ryan Gregory, a biology professor at the University of Guelph in Canada, experienced Washlets for the first time during a recent trip to Japan.
Initially, he was apprehensive. “It’s not a region of your anatomy that you’re used to having sprayed for most of us,” Mr. Gregory said. “I think fairly quickly you realize that North American toilets are vastly inferior.”
After leaving Japan, Mr. Gregory bought two Toto Washlets for his home. The Washlets have become a hit with visiting friends and family, he said: “Now it’s very much the case that anywhere we go it’s like, ‘Ugh it’s not even heated, what are we doing here?’”
More recently, Toto, like many international businesses, has had to navigate the whiplash of President Trump’s trade policies.
Toto manufactures most of the Washlets it sells in the United States in Thailand and Malaysia, countries that Mr. Trump has threatened with additional tariffs of more than 20 percent. Mr. Trump’s tariffs, if enacted, would most likely force Toto to raise its prices in the United States, Mr. Tamura said.
Even so, he said, Toto sees plenty of room for growth, since Washlet-style bidets still account for only about 2.5 percent of American toilets.
“Even with tariffs, the United States will be the biggest growth market for us,” Mr. Tamura said, adding that Toto is not changing its target of more than doubling its Washlet sales in the United States by the end of 2027.
He shared another personal goal: “As revenge, I kind of want to try Times Square again.”