TOTO Museum is Flush with History

Designed to help celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary in 2017, the TOTO Museum displays over 950 of the company’s most iconic products, including its high-tech toilets and prefabricated modular bathrooms. As they travel through time, visitors come to understand company’s role in the modernization of Japan through Western-style plumbing products and the development of public sanitation systems, helping create a healthy, comfortable lifestyle for its citizens.

Among the iconic products on display are the plumbing products TOTO designed for the Japanese parliament, General Douglas MacArthur’s bathroom suite, a modular bathroom installed in the Hotel New Otani prior to the 1964 Olympics, and the extra wide, extreme load-bearing toilets that TOTO makes for sumo wrestling stadiums. 

The $60 million dollar structure’s soft architectural form resembles a drop of water; subtly reminding museum visitors of the important role water plays in their daily lives and the life of the planet. 

The Museum itself is a sustainable building designed with the latest environmental technologies, including water conservation, solar power, green roofing, crushed porcelain paving materials, Hydrotect, and natural ventilation.

The TOTO Museum houses three permanent collections. The first exhibition explains the history and founding of TOTO, with some of the first products the company created, and offers a sneak peek behind the scenes of product creation, from ideation and concept development through manufacturing to final packaging.

The second exhibition reveals how TOTO’s products evolved over the years, in particular the company’s faucets, WASHLET, and NEORESTs. The final exhibit shows the products sold in each geographical area around the globe.

The museum’s library offers materials on TOTO's history, toilets and public health, and its shop sells some original goods produced in collaboration with local businesses.