Article: Comfort station: the bidet toilet with seat-warming and other advanced functions is officially the toilet of choice among Japanese. Jitsumori Izuru investigates the rise of the luxury loo.(Facts Of Life)

THE percentage of Japanese household bathrooms equipped with bidet toilet seats has topped 50% for the first time, according to a survey by the Economic and Social Research Institute in March 2003. Demand has grown steadily since the 1980s, making these toilet seats a sleeper hit for the home appliance industry, a sector that has suffered from the general economic slowdown. The figure (51.7%) for household adoption of bidet toilets is lower than that for personal computers (63.3%), but it is far greater than comparable figures for many popular digital appliances, such as digital cameras (32.0%) and DVD players (25.3%).

Bidet toilet seats were initially developed ...

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