Of the eight standard symbols Japanese toilet makers fixed for the control panel in January 2017, Stop is the one that entered neither the Japanese national standard nor the international register. Seven of the eight went into JIS S 0103 in December 2018 and six into ISO 7000 in January 2018, and the association names every one of them on its own detail pages: Dryer reached the Japanese standard but not the international one.
The industry body fixed eight panel symbols, and publishes them for anyone to use
The body is the Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association, formed in April 2015 by the merger of two earlier associations, one for sanitary equipment and one for the heated washing seat that its English pages call a spray seat; its English page about the association describes the body as composed of seven member companies. Its English page describes the 2017 set as the “main 8 category pictograms” and says the drawings were released for download so that they could be adopted by makers outside its own membership as well as inside it. The association states the reason plainly: a rise in visitors from abroad, and the aim of a toilet anyone can use with confidence.
The eight are these, with the labels the association prints on its own English sheet.
| Symbol | What the panel does |
|---|---|
| Flushing Toilet Flush | Full flush |
| Flushing Toilet Light Flush | Reduced flush |
| Lid Opening and Closing | Raises or lowers the lid |
| Seat Opening and Closing | Raises or lowers the seat |
| Stop | Ends whatever is running |
| Rear Cleansing | Rear spray |
| Front Cleansing | Front spray |
| Dryer | Warm air |
The Japanese sheet and the English sheet carry the same eight drawings but not the same wording. The one the English sheet calls Front Cleansing is labelled on the Japanese sheet with the loanword for bidet, and the two flush symbols are labelled there as large and small rather than as flush and light flush. The drawing of the full flush is a spiral with six dots around it; the reduced flush is a smaller spiral with three. The Stop symbol is a filled square with no picture inside it at all.
Seven of the eight entered JIS S 0103, six entered ISO 7000, and Stop entered neither
JIS S 0103, the Japanese standard for consumer symbols, was revised on 20 December 2018. The association’s own account of that revision says that seven of the eight pictograms it had drawn up in January 2017 were added to or changed in the standard. Eleven months earlier, in January 2018, six of the eight were registered under ISO 7000, the international register of graphical symbols for use on equipment.
The subtraction is mine: one of the eight did not go into the Japanese standard, and two did not go into the international register. The association names them on its own detail pages. The Japanese standard lists its seven under the numbers 6.2.3 to 6.2.9, and Stop is the one it leaves out. The ISO register lists its six under the numbers ISO 7000-3609 to ISO 7000-3614, and it leaves out Stop and Dryer. So Stop, the filled square, is the one symbol that neither list took, and Dryer sits in the Japanese standard but not in the international register.
The signs on the door are a different standard from the buttons on the wall
JIS Z 8210, the standard for public information symbols, was revised on 20 February 2019, and that revision added three symbols: a Western-style bowl, a Japanese-style bowl and a spray seat. Those are signs for finding and choosing a cubicle, not controls inside it. The eight panel symbols and these three are separate lists in separate standards, revised two months apart.
The layout of the wall buttons went from Japan to ISO, not the other way
JIS S 0026 was established in March 2007 as a design guideline for older and disabled users. Its subject line is the shape, the colour and the arrangement of the operating parts inside a public toilet cubicle, named there as the flush button and the call button, together with the arrangement of the fixtures. ISO 19026:2015 was written from that Japanese standard, and its own subject line covers the shape and the colour of the flush button and the call button on the wall of a public toilet, and their arrangement together with the paper dispenser.
One of that pair summons help rather than water, and both documents fix the shape and the colour of each button as well as where it goes. The international one is explicit that the wall is the surface in question; the Japanese one is written for the operating parts inside the cubicle.
The Japanese standard puts measurements on that arrangement. It groups the paper dispenser, the flush button and the call button together on one wall, to the left or the right of the bowl, with the flush button directly above the dispenser and the call button horizontally behind it. The dispenser sits about 150 to 400mm above the front edge of the seat top and about 0 to 100mm forward of it. The flush button sits about 100 to 200mm above the dispenser, and about 400 to 550mm above that same front edge. The call button sits at the height of the flush button and about 200 to 300mm horizontally behind it. The flush button is to be round and either achromatic or in a cool colour; the call button is to take a shape that is easy to tell apart, a square or a triangle for instance, in a warm colour; and both are to contrast with what surrounds them. The standard allows other measurements where a grab bar or another fitting shares the wall.
Four Japanese standards and one IEC standard cover the fixture and the seat
| Standard | Subject | Date |
|---|---|---|
| JIS A 5207:2022 | Sanitary wares, bowls and basins | Revised 22 August 2022 |
| JIS A 4422:2024 | The spray seat | Revised 20 May 2024 |
| JIS A 4424:2024 | Test methods for spray seat performance | Established 20 May 2024 |
| JIS C 9335-2-84:2019 | Electrical safety of toilet appliances | Revised 20 September 2019 |
| IEC 62947 | Performance measurement of electrically operated spray seats | Issued 11 October 2022 |
A JIS is a voluntary national standard. The association’s own explanation says so directly: it is made under the Industrial Standardization Act, Act No. 185 of 1949, and it acquires binding force only when it is cited in the technical criteria of a law or ordinance. The same page notes that the Act was renamed by a revision that took effect on 1 July 2019. The international side has its own dates. The IEC was founded in 1906 by 13 countries including Japan, admits only one body per country, and has had the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee as Japan’s member since 1953 under a Cabinet understanding.
One of those five carries dates beyond the row above. JIS C 9335-2-84 was adopted on 1 October 2020 as a harmonised standard under the table of the ministerial interpretation that lists criteria based on international standards, and Amendment 1 to it was issued on 20 March 2023 after the general electrical safety standard it sits under was reissued. IEC 62947 was developed from a Japanese proposal. The association also records that ISO standards are made and revised by the vote of the participating countries, of which there were 164 as of 2022.
The Cabinet Office counted 82.5 per cent of households with a spray seat, unchanged in a year
The figure quoted for the spray seat is a Cabinet Office figure, from the Consumer Confidence Survey. The March 2026 round gives 82.5 per cent of households owning one as of the end of March 2026, against 82.5 per cent a year earlier: a difference of 0.0. The number of units held per 100 households fell from 117.7 to 117.4, a change of 0.3 downwards.
The footing is printed with it and it is narrower than the headline suggests. The figures cover households of two or more people. The survey base date was 15 March 2026, a Sunday, and forms were collected between 6 and 23 March 2026 by post and online together. In the same table the spray seat sits below the room air conditioner at 92.2 per cent and above the passenger car at 76.2 per cent.
| Item | End of March 2025 | End of March 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile phone | 95.1% | 95.8% |
| Flat-panel television | 94.4% | 94.1% |
| Room air conditioner | 91.7% | 92.2% |
| Spray seat | 82.5% | 82.5% |
| Passenger car | 78.2% | 76.2% |
Flatness is the point of that row, and the same survey shows what movement looks like. The line for televisions with a built-in internet connection went from 23.6 per cent to 51.3 per cent between the two rounds, a rise of 27.7 points, while the spray seat moved by nothing at all. A note under the same table records that this item was renamed in the March 2026 round, from smart television, with the definition left unchanged.
The remainder is 17.5 per cent, which is my own subtraction from the 82.5 in the table. The association’s own page rounds the same statistic to about 80 per cent and notes that holdings per 100 households have passed 100, which the Cabinet Office figure of 117.4 confirms.
The first Japanese-made spray seat dates from 1967, and the 80 per cent line was crossed in March 2016
The association dates the product to 1967, when the maker then called Ina Seito and now LIXIL put the first domestically produced Western-style bowl with a spray seat, the Sanitarina 61, on the Japanese market. Its English page dates the crossing of 80 per cent to March 2016 and attributes that figure to the Cabinet Office survey of two-or-more-person households, the same series quoted above. Ten years on, the March 2026 round has it at 82.5 per cent.
The association also records a certification that is easy to miss: in 2012 the spray seat was recognised as Mechanical Engineering Heritage by the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, and it states that this was the first machine used in the home to receive that recognition. Beyond the house, the association lists offices, commercial buildings, hotels, railways and station buildings, and from the 2010s passenger aircraft, as places the seat has been fitted.
What none of this tells a visitor is which of the eight symbols the panel in front of them will carry. The association published eight; the Japanese standard took seven; the international register took six; and the symbol left out of both is the filled square marked Stop.
Sources Checked
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — standard pictograms for toilet control panels (Japanese page)
Confirmed that the association drew up the standard pictograms for toilet operation panels in January 2017, that they are described as eight main items, that the data are released for download subject to the association’s guidelines, and that the eight are labelled on the Japanese sheet as bowl flush (large), bowl flush (small), lid opening and closing, seat opening and closing, stop, rear cleansing, bidet cleansing and dryer, the full flush drawn as a spiral with six dots and the reduced flush as a smaller spiral with three.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/trend/pictogram/pictogram01.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — standard pictogram page in English, with the pictogram sheet it displays
Confirmed the wording “main 8 category pictograms”, the date of January 2017, and the eight English labels Flushing Toilet Flush, Flushing Toilet Light Flush, Lid Opening and Closing, Seat Opening and Closing, Stop, Rear Cleansing, Front Cleansing and Dryer.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/global/pictgram.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — standards and criteria
Confirmed that JIS S 0103 was revised on 20 December 2018 and that seven of the eight 2017 pictograms were added to or changed in it; that six of the eight were registered under ISO 7000 in January 2018; that JIS Z 8210 was revised on 20 February 2019 adding three guidance symbols for a Western-style bowl, a Japanese-style bowl and a spray seat; that JIS S 0026 was established in March 2007 and that ISO 19026:2015 was written from it; the dates and subjects of JIS A 5207:2022, JIS A 4422:2024, JIS A 4424:2024 and JIS C 9335-2-84:2019 with its Amendment 1 of 20 March 2023 and its adoption on 1 October 2020; that IEC 62947 was issued on 11 October 2022 from a Japanese proposal; the figure of 164 participating countries as of 2022; that a JIS is a voluntary national standard made under Act No. 185 of 1949 which becomes binding when cited in the technical criteria of a law, that the Act was renamed by the revision effective on 1 July 2019; and that the IEC was founded in 1906 by 13 countries including Japan, admits one body per country, and has had the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee as Japan’s member since 1953 under a Cabinet understanding.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/trend/standard.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — the common rules for the layout of operating equipment in public toilets
Confirmed the full title of JIS S 0026:2007 and its establishment in March 2007; that the paper dispenser, the flush button and the call button are grouped on one wall to the left or the right of the bowl, with the flush button directly above the dispenser and the call button horizontally behind it; the dimensions of about 150 to 400mm above the front edge of the seat top and about 0 to 100mm forward of it for the dispenser, about 100 to 200mm above the dispenser and about 400 to 550mm above the front edge of the seat top for the flush button, and about 200 to 300mm horizontally behind the flush button at the same height for the call button; that other dimensions are permitted where a grab bar or another fitting is installed alongside; that the flush button is to be round and achromatic or in a cool colour and the call button a shape easy to distinguish such as a square or a triangle in a warm colour, both contrasting with their surroundings; and that ISO 19026:2015 was created from this Japanese standard.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/trend/rules_for_public_restroom.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — the JIS S 0103 amendment, pictograms registered
Confirmed that seven of the 2017 pictograms were registered in JIS S 0103 in December 2018 and that the page names all seven, numbered 6.2.3 to 6.2.9: bowl flush (large), bowl flush (small), rear cleansing, bidet cleansing, dryer, lid opening and closing and seat opening and closing. Stop is not among them.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/trend/standard/standard-jis03.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — the toilet control pictograms registered under ISO 7000
Confirmed the registration in January 2018 and that the page names all six, with their registration numbers: ISO 7000-3609 bowl flush (large), 3610 bowl flush (small), 3611 rear cleansing, 3612 bidet cleansing, 3613 lid opening and closing and 3614 seat opening and closing. Stop and dryer are not among them.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/trend/pictogram/pictogram_iso.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — how the association was formed
Confirmed that the association started in April 2015 from the merger of two earlier bodies, one covering sanitary equipment and one covering the spray seat, and that the spray seat body began in April 2001 as a council of ten companies.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/association/setsuritsu.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — about the association (English)
Confirmed that the association is composed of seven companies engaged in the production and sales of toilets, spray seats, wash rooms and other equipment involving water, and that the member list on the page names seven.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/global/about.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — statistics on the spread of the spray seat
Confirmed the 1967 launch by Ina Seito, now LIXIL, of the first domestically produced Western-style bowl with a spray seat, the Sanitarina 61, the approximate 80 per cent penetration and more than 100 units per 100 households attributed to the Cabinet Office Consumer Confidence Survey, the crossing of 80 per cent in March 2016, the 2012 Mechanical Engineering Heritage recognition as the first machine used in the home, and the list of public settings where the seat has been fitted.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/trend/spread.html
Japan Sanitary Equipment Industry Association — about the spray seat (English)
Confirmed the 1967 introduction as a Japanese product, that the penetration rate exceeded 80 per cent as of March 2016, and that the source is the Cabinet Office consumption survey covering the penetration rate in two-or-more-person households in Japan.
https://www.sanitary-net.com/global/about/spray-seat.html
Cabinet Office — Consumer Confidence Survey, the 2026 summary of results (the file carries each round of 2026; the ownership table sits in the section for the March 2026 round)
Confirmed the ownership rates at the end of March 2025 and the end of March 2026 for the spray seat (82.5% and 82.5%, difference 0.0), mobile phones (95.1% and 95.8%), flat-panel televisions (94.4% and 94.1%), room air conditioners (91.7% and 92.2%), passenger cars (78.2% and 76.2%) and televisions with a built-in internet connection (23.6% and 51.3%, a rise of 27.7 points); the holdings per 100 households for the spray seat (117.7 and 117.4, difference 0.3 downwards); that the table covers households of two or more people; and that the survey base date was 15 March 2026 with forms collected from 6 to 23 March 2026 by post and online.
https://www.esri.cao.go.jp/jp/stat/shouhi/kekkanogaiyou2026.pdf
Last updated: September 2026
