Toilets of My Dreams and Nightmares
On Japanese toilets and that weird recurring dream.
The dreams always start differently, and yet they are exactly the same.
A Mad Lib of my unconscious: I’m with friends, or extended family, or a random celebrity, in a location either familiar or unfamiliar, trying to solve some problem that won’t matter in the morning. Then a subplot emerges and takes over the narrative as Dream Me decides she needs to find a bathroom. She searches the abandoned mansion, the streets of Paris, or the community theater, and there is no bathroom! Then, usually, she finds one. Not a bathroom, exactly, just a toilet without walls surrounding it. Or there are walls, but they are transparent, or too short, or otherwise inadmissible. This toilet, in the middle of the mall, or the jungle, or the classroom, is the only option within the playable square footage of this Dream World. Dream Me is frustrated and confused, unsure what to do next. How can this be the only toilet? Am I mistaken, or do bathrooms usually have opaque walls? Why is this happening?!
And then I wake up.
These dreams masquerade as other dreams, hiding inside like the smallest Russian doll. It’s often not until the third act that I realize I’m once again searching for something I will never find. Without sounding defensive, I’ll answer a few things right away. When I wake up from these dreams, I have thankfully not wet the bed. Sometimes I wake up and need to use my own bathroom, with the door sealed shut, and sometimes I don’t need to at all. What I am saying is, these dreams are not connected to my actual bodily functions, and I was potty-trained at an appropriate age.
So why am I plagued by recurring dreams of all-too-public bathrooms? In a script I wrote about psychologists-in-training, a character provided this analysis to someone cursed with the same issue: “This dream means you’re craving autonomy but aren’t willing to ask for it. So you’re constantly disappointed and uncomfortable, but you keep hoping your unspoken boundaries will be respected.” That’s true of my character Marley. No question. But of me??? No comment.
In my first adult apartment in LA, I lived with my roommate, Amy, and her two, then three, cats. I had my own bathroom, but the doorknob had been torn out by a prior tenant. It wasn’t a problem though. All I had to do to shut it securely was pull out a bathroom drawer to block the door from opening all the way. If I forgot the drawer method, one, two, or three cats would push their way inside and rub against my legs or gallivant across shower tiles. Prior to this apartment, I’d lived in a college dorm with co-ed multi-stall restrooms, so sharing my own bathroom with cats was an indisputable upgrade. Plus, I was too busy trying to turn my green hair blond again to address the case of the missing doorknob.
Was this unsecured bathroom of early adulthood the source of my recurring dreams? Or was it the bathroom in my preschool, which had several short toilets without stalls between them? I know I’m not the only one dreaming about unsuitable or missing toilets. It’s somewhat common, according to the internet and my friends who have told me I’m not alone. So it isn’t just me. Is it you, too?
Last month, I went to Japan for the first time. Life-changing, invigorating, inspiring, mesmerizing, I could go on… But let me just say this: Japan knows toilets. Also this: every toilet seat was heated and clean. In train stations, airports, fancy restaurants, holes-in-the-wall, parks, cat cafes, you name it, there would be a clean bathroom and a fancy toilet. I’m talking bidet, heated seat, extensive panel of buttons and settings, sings a tune, plays a light show. It was astonishing.
Japan knows their bathrooms are exceptional, and Tokyo Toilet Project takes it up a notch. This project is behind the construction of 17 public toilets by 16 designers. These toilets are better described as art installations, and they even feature in a recent Academy Award-nominated film, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days. Japan’s 2023 entry for Best International Feature Film, the meditative story follows Hirayama, played by Kōji Yakusho, who works as a toilet cleaner for the Tokyo Toilet Project. The film is a peaceful, plodding celebration of a contemplative man of few words who puts his all into every little task and finds gratitude in the present moment. “You’ll think it’s boring,” I texted my parents, and maybe that applies to you, too. But as a fan of Japanese toilets, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
The only two TTP toilets to be designed by the same designer, Shigeru Ban, are also featured in the film. These toilets, which I didn’t have the chance or gall to use during my trip, are exactly what my unconscious is afraid of. The walls are transparent when the room is empty and turn opaque when occupied. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?
Today, I have two bathrooms and one cat who tries to paw her way in. One of the bathrooms has a barn door, which occasionally unhooks itself, sliding open, reminiscent of my dreams, except I’m in my own home and there are no crowds of people peeking in. My cat, Kimchi, likes to run in and out of the bathrooms, roll around in the empty tub, and rub her whiskers against the edge of the shower doors. Like most cats, she hates closed doors and vacations she’s not invited on. I wonder if they haunt her dreams.
Freud would no doubt say your dreams, the "royal road to the unconscious," relate to your experience with potty training - thanks for nipping that. Another excellent essay!