A Day to Celebrate “A Place of Convenience”
Today is #WorldToiletDay! And here is my linguistic contribution towards raising awareness of the importance of public hygiene and sanitation.
There are a variety of words to describe toilets in Japanese. Here, let me focus solely on those most commonly used in modern life in Japan.
トイレ (toilet)
This term is commonly used but you won’t necessary see this word on a sign.
WC (water closet)
This abbreviation is more commonly used on signs.
お手洗い (literally hand-washing space, i.e. lavatory)
This is a kind of euphemism used to discreetly indicate where you can go to answer nature’s call.
化粧室 (powder room)
This sophisticated version of the term is frequently seen in department stores and hotels.
便所 (latrine)
In my opinion, the last one 便所 (Ben-jo, meaning latrine) seems to have fallen almost completely out of fashion nowadays and is somehow disappearing from public signs.
And here is my guess in explaining its unpopularity:
This word consists of two Chinese characters 便 (the meaning of which I will explain below) and 所 (which means place).
The first character 便 holds a direct association with bodily waste.
大便 (adjective “large” + 便) refers to faeces, whereas 小便 (adjective “small” + 便) refers to urine. Therefore, people are rather shy when it comes to using this word.
One should not forget, however, that the character 便 can also mean “convenience”.
Hence, the true meaning of Ben-jo may be a “place of convenience”. And this very convenience is being denied to 3.6 billion people, according to the UN.
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