Chiayi County Dongshi High School - Aesthetics of Life from the Toilet

Students, parents and even junior high school teachers have always complained that the school toilets are dirty and messy. At the beginning of the semester, the head of the sanitation team proposed to make improvements this school year by forming students into teams for cleaning competitions, which led to the design of this course.

Toilets are a symbol of Japan's world-renowned hospitality culture. The "Tokyo Public Toilet Project" began in 2020, during the Tokyo Olympics. In order to dispel the negative haze that the public believes that public toilets are generally dark and dirty, the Japanese Foundation, Shibuya City Government, and clothing brand UNIQLO have joined hands to renovate 17 public toilets in Shibuya District. They have invited well-known architects such as Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and Shigeru Ban to use "design power" to send the most practical and friendly Japanese welcome to foreign athletes and travelers. At that time, Wen Wenders was invited to shoot a promotional video for the "Tokyo Public Toilet Project". He was amazed by the series of renovated public toilets, so he expanded the original promotional video into a feature film - "My Perfect Daily Life", depicting the daily life of Tokyo public toilets with the director's aesthetics full of poetry and Zen.
After watching the movie "My Perfect Day", follow the protagonist, a public toilet cleaner, to visit 17 toilets designed by architects in Tokyo, and deeply feel how the protagonist makes the daily life that is simple to the point of being simpler perfect. The protagonist gets up early every morning, waters the flowers, drinks coffee, cleans the public toilet, listens to cassette music, and lives a repetitive but ritualistic life. The protagonist in the movie does not just live in these ordinary moments, but also makes the ordinary life beautiful in an almost pure way. Follow his eyes to the sky, listen to the sound of the floor being swept, and feel an almost meditative calm. Behind such a seemingly simple life, there are deep choices and stories hidden. His life was simple, but his soul was rich.
I think beauty requires not perfection and cleanliness, but uniqueness and imagination. Especially in school days where students have to follow a schedule day after day, it is even more necessary to learn this aesthetic experience subtly in order to change the way individuals interact with the external environment. The toilet is a place people have to go to every day. Most people have the impression that toilets are dirty and smelly. They will not talk about them in public and will avoid mentioning them while eating to avoid reducing their appetite and interest. However, amusing toilet literature has also developed when it comes to using the toilet, or it has been beautified with elegant names such as Tingyu Pavilion and Guanpu Pavilion. Aesthetics is not only about artistic creation and aesthetic form, but also includes visual experience and visual culture that are ubiquitous in daily life (Zhao Huiling, 2005). So let’s start from the toilet! Only when students can deeply feel the beauty of ordinary life can they have a beautiful life of contentment and cherishment.