Architects and designers take over Tokyo toilets in an immersive exhibition which inspired Wim Wenders

Part bathroom, part art gallery, the Tokyo Toilet / Shibuyu project combines the two in a project which sees architect-designed toilets pop up all over Tokyo. The brainchild of Koji Yanai, the exhibition consists of one-of-a-kind pieces of architecture, different from one another. Beyond the obvious functionality, they offer surprises - concentrated in one area, they create an interesting itinerary for design connoisseurs.

Prominent architects and an artistic director (Japanese in the majority), including Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Sou Fujimoto, Shigeru Ban, Masamichi Katayama and Nigo®, to name a few, joined the project. Furniture designer Mark Newson joined them from abroad, and together they created everything from a squid to a boat, a spacecraft, a mushroom and a small house.

Seventeen restrooms were constructed or redesigned from the existing ones in Shibuya, with the full cooperation of the city. Shibuya includes Omotesando and Harajuku, the conglomerates home to high-end boutiques, hip retailers and fancy restaurants. The crowd is sensitive to something new - it was a perfect location.

The promotion was not for commercial purposes, but rather to heighten awareness, to maintain cleanliness and a respect for the cleaners. Yanai wrote to Wim Wenders, asking for a short video direction. Once the German film maker had come and visited all the sites, he pronounced, “I want to make a real movie.” This was the beginning of Perfect Days, that was honoured with the Prize of Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. Its plot narrates the daily life of a toilet cleaner, played by Koji Yakusho (who won the best actor award). The lonely character he plays, also an amateur photographer, reveals a series of black and white images of trees, captured with delicate light.

Photographer Daido Moriyama has captured this unique universe with his raw, striking images of the streets and ordinary people, mostly in contrasted black and white (almost like a low-resolution photocopy). He is a daring choice, but the photographer, close to 90 years old today, was enthusiastic about the proposition. “TTT has changed the reason of being of a public restroom,” Moriyama says.

The first The Tokyo Toilet images by Moriyama flew to another continent and were shown, on a small scale, at the Duomo underground station toilet in Milan, during Salone Del Mobile 2022. This introduction was followed by a presentation at Paris Photo 2023. For the launch of the book Daido Moriyama-THE TOKYTO TOILET, the booth, including the floor, was covered with his images.

Finally, this summer, the photo project returned to its birth place. Inside ten of the seventeen of The Tokyo Toilets, Moriyama’s work is unfolded in diverse ways, according to each unit’s design. Each installation is site-specific. For instance, individual prints are hung inside a restroom stall or around washstand. A huge collage of the images was transformed into wallpaper inside another. The photos have even been printed onto the toilet paper. It’s like toilets-in-toilets.

In addition, at the Hatagaya public toilet, imagined by Miles Pennington (Professor of DLX Design lab at The University of Tokyo), the annexed open space is transformed into a photo gallery. Moriyama expresses his vision. “Displaying my TTT images inside TTT in Shibuya, means that I deliver the cityscape back to itself. It is, for me, that the soul of the images leaves for its own journey departing from the photographer’s hands, and continues evolving within viewer’s memories. {…..}This is the greatest power of photography. ”

As a constantly moving project, The Tokyo Toilet might be presented at a new venue in the near future, in a similar or totally different way. Be ready to be surprised.

THE TOKYO TOILET / SHIBUYA on view through September 23. The itinerary map and photos of each toilet on the official website.

https://tokyotoilet.jp/en/