Inbound tourists invariably rave about Japan’s superior security and hospitality, and while you often hear them comment positively about smart toilets, it’s usually in the context of how surprisingly common they are. However, we’ve almost never heard anyone talk about public restrooms, which are convenient, clean, and plentiful in Japan, unlike in, say, the U.S., where they are almost impossible to find—and when you do they’re probably filthy.  We’ve known Japanese people who say they don’t like to visit the U.S. any more because relieving oneself when out and about is such a desperate chore. That’s never a problem in Japan.

But that doesn’t mean Japanese public toilets are perfect; or, at least, they’re not perfect for half the population. If you’re female, often you will have to stand in line for an empty stall in a public restroom if you’re in a busy place, and women and girls seem to take this inconvenience in stride. But if you think carefully about it, why is it that women have to wait and men usually don’t? 

A recent two-part feature in the Asahi Shimbun addressed this problem through the experience of a Tokyo notary public, Manami Momose, who researched the matter on her own. Several years ago, Momose was in JR Kurashiki Station when she desperately needed to relieve herself, and had to wait 5 minutes for a ladies room stall. When she emerged, she checked the floor plan diagram, which many public facilities post on the wall outside their rest rooms, and compared the gentlemen’s to the ladies’. She was shocked to find that the men’s room had 4 urinals and 3 stalls, while the women’s room had 4 stalls, a 7:4 ratio. Given the difference between male and female physiologies, not to mention gender-specific grooming habits and apparel choice—for the most part, women have more arranging to do before and after using the toilet—it’s easy to see why women might take more time in the rest room than men do, but why the discrepancy in facilities? Sure, women can’t use urinals, which take up less space than stalls, but why do men get more places to pee than women do?

With these questions in mind, Momose carried out a survey of public toilets throughout Japan, visiting railway stations, subways, airports, concert halls, retail spaces, parks, what have you, and what she found was startling. Of the 706 places she studied, 90 percent had more toilets in the men’s rest room—meaning urinals and stalls—than the women’s room did. And it was pretty consistent regardless of the type of place. For instance, Momose thought that in retail spaces like department stores there would be more toilets for women, since she imagines there are more female patrons, but, no: men still had access to more devices for relieving themselves. In fact, in many places men even had access to more stalls than women did, a situation she found “perverse.” 

She started publicizing her findings on social media, and received a lot of feedback from women who shared her outrage. She posted diagrams of rest room floor plans on X, pointing out that in almost all cases the floor area was the same for women’s rest rooms as it was for men’s. As already mentioned, urinals take up less space than stalls, so of course the people who designed these rest rooms could fit more toilet devices in the men’s room, but why didn’t they just make the women’s room larger? It’s a classic case of equality-versus-equity: same space for men and women, but not the same accessibility.

When she talked to “sanitation experts” she was told the same thing: women have to wait for stalls because they take longer doing what they do than men do. When it comes to urinating, men spend about 30 seconds, while for women it’s 90 seconds. But that answer didn’t satisfy Momose. If such experts (probably men, but Asahi doesn’t say) are tapped as consultants for designing public rest rooms, why don’t they just recommend more stalls for women, since that would be the natural way to address the time-spent-peeing issue. She became even more confused when she contacted the person in charge of such matters at JR East, whose stations contain 1,100 sets of rest room, and found that there was no available data on the actual number of stalls and urinals. The contact person told her, without providing statistics, that JR East “has more male patrons than female patrons,” so, naturally, men’s rest rooms have more toilets. Diving further into the matter, Momose located guidelines for rest room design for JR stations, which stated that the number of toilets, whether for men or for women, was determined through “observation of usage over time and the gender distribution of passengers.” If that were actually the case, then whoever was doing the observing should have clearly realized that women take longer in the rest room and therefore should have more toilets. JR said that while they did have related survey results, they would not disclose them publicly. Why? Is it a state secret?

Asahi’s own research found that, in fact, public rest rooms in Japan are designed with men in mind, according to one expert, who went on to say that the system is thus “automatically flawed.” The Japan Toilet Research Center told the newspaper that “over time” the ratio of public toilets between men and women is starting to become more equitable, but provided little in the way of evidence that things are changing. According to the construction ministry, 44 percent of the women who use rest rooms in train stations have to wait while 31 percent of men do. The difference in large retail outlets is even more pronounced: 47 percent of women versus 15 percent of men. 

The only public spaces that seem to be working on the problem are airports and expressway service areas, which makes sense because in both places people tend to be in a hurry. Asahi found that there was little to no waiting time for either gender in such places because there was an abundance of toilets, and one organization that manages service areas said their rest rooms were designed so that users would spend not more than two minutes in them.  The worst places are performing arts venues because “usage time” was limited—either before/after a performance or during intermission. (When we used to regularly attend plays at the old Kabuki-za, the situation was especially dire during intermissions for female patrons because many were dressed in kimono.)

One town in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Hagi, has actually tried to do something about the problem by mandating that all new construction of buildings with public access provide a 1:2 ratio of toilets between men and women. An industry association of sanitation-related companies has changed its guidelines for toilet ratios for men to women in new buildings from 4:1 (!) in 2009 to 1:1 today.

And while American public toilets are the pits regardless of equity of access, most foreign countries have tackled the problem already. Taiwanese law mandates male:female ratios in schools of 1:5 and in train stations and office buildings of 1:3. In the U.S. and Canada, depending on the state or province, the ratio has to be at least 1:2. Even refugees have it better than Japan. The Red Cross standard for camps and evacuation facilities is 1:3.

As one professor who teaches gender studies told Asahi, the toilet gap is “typical” of Japan’s stance when it comes to gender differences. Social design “is always approached from the male position,” the professor said, and improvements take a long time, which means not only women, but also sexual minorities and disabled people tend to be left behind in the greater scheme of things. So fight for your right to pee at your leisure.