Happiness Is a Clean Toilet

Beginning in 2011, about three dozen people in Tokyo have been meeting every Sunday at 
6 a.m. on a mission to scrub down, one by one, the city’s grungiest public restrooms. “By 7:30,” according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed an August outing, the team had left behind a “gleaming public toilet, looking as good as the day it was installed.” Explained the hygiene-intense Satoshi Oda (during the week, a computer programmer), the mission is “for our own good” — work that leader Masayuki Magome compares to the training Buddhist monks receive to find peace. (In fact, to fulfill the group’s motto, “Clean thyself by cleaning cubicles,” the scouring must be done with bare hands.) A squad supporter spoke of a sad, growing apprehension that the younger generation no longer shares the Japanese cultural conviction that restrooms should always be clean and safe.