What’s the deal with Japan’s fascination with poop?

Some The most popular Japanese exercise books Surprisingly, kids are all about poop. The information in these books is accurate, but these publications—which are designed to teach writing, math, and other subjects—use poop as mascots and basic assignments around the topics. this Winco drill bit series(Winco meaning “poop”) has sold more than 10 million copies and has even inspired poop-themed adult educational material. This is just the tip of the shit mountain. Yungu Museumis a poop-themed interactive art space with branches in eight cities from Tokyo to Melbourne. It’s especially popular with female visitors because it strives to make poop “cute, stylish and fun.” How and why does this happen? Or, in other words, what’s the scoop on Japanese poop? Let’s take a look.

The Japanese word for “poop” is also cute

In Japanese, “poop” is called “unko” or “poop”uncleNeither word is considered a swear word, and it’s not unheard of for children to use these words in everyday conversation. The “un” part of both terms may come from an onomatopoeic expression of tension and effort, such as when having a bowel movement. Onomatopoeia approximates real-world sounds and may actually be the first words spoken by humans. Their natural, less casual feel explains their popularity and frequent use in Japanese around 14 or 15 years ago. century, “un” was softened by the addition of “-ko” which means “child” or “little thing” and is a popular diminutive suffix that shows a lovely familiarity with the word and the things it describes. and social acceptance.

There are more theories as to the origin of the “un” core, but the addition of “-ko” certainly softens “unko” in a lovely way, just as it does with words like my mother (kitten) or washing machine (dog). Meanwhile, the “-chi” in “unci” may be a cute variation of “-ko,” not unlike the familiar “-chan” suffix that evolved from the formal “-san” via baby talk.

Regardless, the Japanese language may be one of the reasons why poop doesn’t carry as much of a stigma as it does elsewhere. It probably doesn’t hurt that “un” can be written with the kanji for “luck.”

In Japan, poop is sacred

Poop also often appears in trivial matteris an 8th-century collection of myths, legends, and genealogies that constitute Japan’s oldest literary work. For example, after the beauty goddess Izana The birth of the Japanese archipelagoshe gave birth to a fire god who was burned to death during her delivery. The pain Izanami experienced caused her to lose control of her intestines and her waste transformed into the god “Miko Hayasu”. Today, he has been promoted to the god of earth and clay, although his fecal origins remain part of the story. If God can also poop, if poop itself can become a god, then it is difficult to say that it is completely negative, right?

Another myth tells that the powerful Omono Lord God once fell in love with the beautiful Seyarahime, and while she was relieving herself in a ditch, he transformed himself into an arrow and “jabbed her private parts.” Later, the arrow transformed into a handsome man and the two got married. Who says romance is dead? exist The cultural origins of premodern fecal collection systems in Japan (Published in Global Waste: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Research), Marta E. Szczygiel suggests that such a legend may explain the connection between the toilet god Kawaya-gami and fertility. Japanese pregnant women once offered red beans and rice to the toilet god to ensure a safe delivery. Some even took their newborn babies to the toilet for “private sacrifices.”

Sitting at the crossroads of the sacred and the cute (babies and all), it’s easy to see why Japan isn’t grossed out by “human clay.” But the story doesn’t end there.

Shit was big money in feudal Japan

Before something becomes “cute,” it first has to be commonplace – during the Edo period (1603 – 1867), poop was everywhere because it became so important. As the population of Edo (now Tokyo) exploded, agriculture had to increase its efforts to feed more than a million people, and the key to achieving this was fertilizer made from “dung” (that is, human waste), as Japan The number of excrement-producing livestock in Edo is relatively small.

Japan’s poop trade Profitable and competitive Kind of interesting by modern standards. There is adulteration (watering down to increase the volume of excrement), price gouging, and businessmen competing for excrement from wealthy neighborhoods, which costs more than the excrement of poor people. Landlords, in particular, have become extremely wealthy as a result of the feces trade because, by law, all feces in their public toilets belongs to them. According to Marta E. Szczygiel, these landlords made “almost twice as much as the average carpenter” from the smelly gold mine.

Unlike the black market trade in back alleys, poop trading takes place in the open, with people exchanging buckets from home toilets for money or vegetables. Children see all this and therefore see poop as just another part of life and this is how it is incorporated into their songs and games for kawaii Unko (cute poop).

For example, in Lone wolf and cub — in both the comic and the 1972 film adaptation — two kids pinball while singing a playful nursery rhyme: “If you dropped a hard turd from a high mountain, it would be covered with sand, and Roll, roll, roll.” It’s not a big leap from here to the Unko Museum and its poop-themed game “Crappy Arcade.”

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