is a registered trademark of the Japanese toilet company TOTO and is used for their line of cleansing toilet seats with water spray feature for genital and anal cleansing. The Washlet is an electronic bidet and commonplace on toilets in Japan. Released in June 1980, a total of more than 30 million Washlets had been sold by January 2011. History Toto's business model in the 1960s was to import American “wash air seats” for domestic sales. They were mainly sold to hospitals for medical purposes and nursing homes. Toto began domestic production in 1969, but wash air seats were initially expensive and sometimes caused scalding injuries because of poor regulation of water temperature. Toto continued its own research and development, surveying 300 male and female employees to determine the appropriate spray positions, because there were no biometric statistics available. Banking on the prospect that washlets would widely sell in Japan, Toto began to sell its own improved washlets in 1980. The two models were the G series ("Gorgeous") that could store warm water, had a bidet and a dryer function, and toilet seat warming (the function of which is called "warmlet"); and the S series ("Standard)" that instantly turned cold water into warm water and was equipped with a bidet and a warmlet function. The two series have remained the basic product models until now, along with a compact series introduced in 1993. The models initially included a regular size and an elongated size, depending on the configuration of the toilet to which washlets were attached, but were replaced by single-sized models in February 2012 with a few exceptions such as products for hotel usage. Recognizing its pioneering role, in 2012, the initial model Washlet G was certified as item number 55 of Mechanical Engineering Heritage. In a 1982 commercial that featured then-rising pop singer Jun Togawa, the advertising slogan “Our butt wants to be washed too” and unique background music quickly drew public attention to Toto's new product. As the commercial was originally aired during the 7–10 pm slot, known as "golden time", it received complaints from viewers about the impropriety of advertising toilet seats during mealtime, and criticism for using the word "butt". Toto introduced a sensor that detects whether the user is seated or not, throughout the product lineup (earlier washlets activated regardless of whether the user was seated or not). The company added new functions including