If you don’t know, 2 out of 3 Japanese men prefer sitting to pee rather than standing. They are called “people”suwari-shon“, a pun in Japanese for compound words”suwari“meaning sit, still”shonben“means urine.
Men who urinate sitting down explain that their habit is more civilized than those who urinate standing up (tachi-shon), because sitting is less likely to cause urine to come out. They also found it more relaxing to be seated, hands free to use the phone in the toilet.
But there is also a special reason that surveys over the past 20 years show that many Japanese men only begin to urinate sitting down after getting married.
More and more Japanese men pee sitting down
In 1999, for the first time, the electronics company Matsushita Electric Works, which had not yet changed its name to Panasonic, conducted a survey in Japan that found that only 15% of Japanese men sat down while urinating.
In case you asked why an electronics company would do this research, Panasonic is also a big player in the sanitary ware industry. To this day, they regularly conduct research on consumer bathroom habits and even fund biomedical research on urinary tract health.
In 2004, Panasonic repeated their survey and found that 30% of Japanese men pee sitting down. That’s a good sign to start rolling out toilet products with built-in heating and sensors.
But in 2007, Panasonic wanted to dig deeper into why Japanese men were urinating more and more. They did this by surveying 518 couples between the ages of 30 and 50.
The results showed that up to 49% of the husbands in this group urinated sitting down. The reason given was because their wives complained about their ability “Standing on target” his inferior. The women are often the ones who have to clean the toilets, so they ask their husbands to sit down to prevent urine from spilling on the floor.
In the year of the pandemic 2020, Panasonic has once again conducted their interesting survey. This time, the number of men urinating while sitting has increased to 70%, a record number.
According to interviews with 155 Japanese men, the reason they choose to pee sitting down because of the pandemic makes them stay at home more, especially with their wives, who often remind and tutor them about their urination habits.
You think you “hit the mark”, but this is what happens
What Panasonic found from its surveys coincides with a new survey conducted in October by Japanese toiletries maker Lion Corp. Accordingly, they interviewed 1,500 men between the ages of 20 and 60 and found that 60.9% of men preferred sitting to pee rather than standing.
There are 25.7% of respondents saying that they have changed their habit from urinating standing up to peeing sitting down because they think of others like their wife who have to clean the toilet. 19.3% started to pee sitting down because it was they who had to clean up.
Interestingly, sitting pee is also being taught to men in Japan. Specifically, 11.9% of men said that they were taught to sit to pee from an early age by their parents and educational videos. In contrast, 2.7% of men in their 60s now also urinate sitting down.
Tomoyuki Isowa, a 53-year-old business owner in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, said he learned the habit of peeing sitting down from his son, after one visit to his home and the son reminded his father to sit down when he left. urine.
“From then on I also thought of my wife, who always had to do the cleaning. And I learned that sitting down while relaxing allows me to relax more when standing“, Mr. Isowa shared.
Stickers recommending men to sit while urinating in Japan.
Sitting pee is good for men’s health
This fact has been confirmed by some urologists. They reported that in the sitting position, the urinary tracts of both women and men were positioned in a more favorable urodynamically structural position.
This helps to effectively expel urine and waste from the bladder, with less backlog compared to standing urine in men. Maximum urinary volume and flow rate, an indicator of urinary tract health, increased when they urinated sitting down, while their bladder emptying time decreased.
In 2014, a study by Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands found that sitting pee is a good habit for both the urinary tract and prostate gland in men, as this position helps them relax the arch muscles. better pelvic and sphincter muscles and less pressure on your organs.
In contrast, when standing, men will have to activate the muscles around their lower abdomen, pelvis, and spine. These muscles all prevent urine from flowing, and as a result, they will come out of the toilet with excess urine and residue in their bladder.
Professor Jamin Brahmbhatt and a urologist at the University of Central Florida School of Medicine says the sitting habit is especially good for men who already have an enlarged prostate or prostate gland. This will help them reduce their chances of developing cysts and many other health complications.
Urologists say men should pee sitting down for better prostate and urinary tract health.
Even some urologists say sitting down on the toilet is not enough, perhaps you should put an extra chair in front to keep your knees higher than your hips. They say that basically, squatting is the most natural human peeing position.
In a 1918 study in the American Journal of Anthropology, scientists reported that in hunter-gatherer tribes like the Arawaks in Brazil, their men also squatted to urinate.
Ancient monks in China were also known for their habit of squatting while urinating. This was recorded by Yifa, a scholar in the book “The Origin of Buddhist Monastic Rule in China”.
Candace Granberg, a urologist at the Mayo Clinic medical center, USA said: “When you’re not sitting low enough, your hips are so high that it’s hard for your pelvic floor muscles to relax.
“The perfect position is when you’re almost completely squatting, with your hips just below your knees, because that relaxes the pelvic floor muscles, allowing the sphincters to relax which in turn helps you empty your bladder.” and his rectum”.
Refer Japantimes, Washingtonpost, Menshealth
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