Journal of What?
By Patrick F. Cannon
New Year’s Day or not, I always start the day by reading the Chicago Tribune. Although now just a shadow of its former self, old habits die hard. I’ve regularly read a morning paper for some 70 years, even when I was in the Army in the early 1960s. Among the dailies I’ve started the day with, in addition to the Trib, are the Chicago Sun-Times, Atlanta Constitution, Los Angeles Times, and the Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune (when the Army posted me to France).
Over the years, I’ve always found something to balance the general gloom. New Year’s Day 2025 was no different. In a feature called “People’s Pharmacy,” someone asked if there was any risk of infection from using a bidet. Until I spent the weekend in a hotel in LaRochelle, France with some Army buddies in the early 1960s, I had been unaware of the existence of this sanitary appliance. When I inspected the ensuite facilities in our room, I discovered what looked at first like a toilet without a seat. “What’s this?”, I asked. One of my fellow soldiers who had been in France much longer than I told me it was a bidet and explained its purpose.
I was puzzled by this, as in those days the French seemed unconcerned about most body odors. My more sophisticated pal said he thought it had to do with sex. While the French didn’t seem to mind a bit of underarm miasma, they liked their privates to be pristine when they did the naughty.
As you may know, bidets are catching on in this country. A warm stream of water squirting on your nether regions is both sanitary and somehow pleasurable. New bathrooms are now often equipped with bidets, and you can have your current toilet retrofitted with a seat that does the same thing for a bit less dough. But are they truly sanitary?
According to (and I’ve been sneaking up on this!) the Journal of the Anus, Rectum and Colon, it can be a problem, but easily rectified by regular cleaning of the system. I can only imagine what else appears in this eminent journal. But if you’re interested, it’s a quarterly publication of the Japan Society of Coloproctology. While published in Japan, it’s board includes members from around the world. If you visit their web site, I’m sure you can get a subscription.
I found that you can update your existing toilet with a bidet seat. While a basic model can be had for as little as $150, the top-of-the-line model runs about $400. Since it can be programmed, and heats the water, this might be a wise investment. Of course, you may be the cold shower type. If so, you can save a buck!
So, Happy New Year! You might want to resolve to read the daily newspaper. Imagine what you might learn!
Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon
cannonnadedotcom 
In Europe after the war, and possibly also before the war, paper was a rare and costly commodity. Your chances of finding toilet paper in a bathroom were slim, and if you did find some, it had the texture of sandpaper. Often there were just sheets of old newspaper. (The thought of people walking around with newsprint on their bottoms was intriguing.) If the toilet in question was outdoors, the newspaper might be replaced with leaves from nearby trees.
The ancient custom in Arab countries, where there were few trees for paper or leaves, was to cleanse oneself with water from a bowl provided for the purpose. Whereas in the interests of hygiene your right hand was used for eating, your left hand was strictly reserved for baser purposes. Woe was he whose right hand had been cut off as punishment!
The bidet was likely a French invention. It’s a French word for “pony” (you straddle it like a horse) and bider means “to trot.” I find them useful to wash out socks when traveling.
My first encounter, not with the bidet — we had one when my family lived in Italy — but with the Japanese robotic toilet seat, was in an upscale Osaka hotel. As your illustration suggests, the apparatus had a panel of buttons that controlled the various nozzles for water and warm air that provided the user with a hands-free defecation experience. As the panel was labeled in Japanese, I didn’t know what to expect. Would I be electrocuted? Mangled? Propelled into the air like the gal in the illustration? Fortunately, you could turn the thing off and use the toilet in the way Nature intended.
The Japanese are known for their attention to sanitation and hygiene, as any visitor to Japan has discovered,. Where else do you take a shower before you take a bath? They are also known for their fondness for invention. I especially like the chopsticks with a fan attached to cool your noodles as you eat. And who can forget the umbrella hats, designed to keep your head dry on rainy days? Not perfect, the rest of you gets soaked, but I’m sure they are working on it.
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Unlike the Japanese, apparently the Europeans are a hands-on folk.
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The Japanese don’t even like to shake hands!
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You crack me up, Patrick Cannon.
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