Cleaning Up on Hygiene Mania

The most fastidious country in the world is becoming even more hygiene-obsessed.

Consider the antibacterial calculator, on whose keypad microbes will not multiply. A tsunami-sized wave of consumer interest has created a multibillion-dollar market for such products, which include everything from sheets and towels to watchbands and wigs, staplers, ATM cards and even bacteria-busting rice-cookers.

The hyper-clean calculators--impregnated with a germ-killing agent--come from Casio, which intended to market them to restaurants and hospitals. But many of the buyers turn out to be germ-hating young women.

“They are ‘office ladies’ who say they can’t stand it when their middle-aged male bosses touch their things,” explained a stationery store clerk.

Japan has long placed a cultural premium on cleanliness, a legacy of the ancient Shinto religion’s emphasis on ritual purification. “Before Japanese pray for something very important, they wash the body and dress in a new white kimono,” said sociologist Takahiko Furuta of Aomori University in northern Japan.

Even the Japanese word kirei means both “clean” and “beautiful.” Thus to be unclean--or merely slovenly--is considered a moral transgression.

But over the last decade, young Japanese have become exceptionally hygiene-conscious--and intolerant of anyone who isn’t. Schoolyard bullies brand their victims “bacteria.” Many teenage girls refuse to allow their clothing to be washed with their fathers’, claiming that dear old Dad is dirty. Stodgy business newspapers report on the swelling ranks of young Lady Macbeths who wash their hands incessantly, are afraid to use their office restrooms and are obsessed with eliminating odors from their meticulously groomed bodies.

“The Tokyo environment has become extremely artificial, and people have begun to view their bodies as artificial,” Furuta said. “This is not an illness; it’s a value system shared by an entire generation.”

“I just get the feeling that things are dirty,” said Rui Konishi, 17, who owns an antibacterial toothbrush and socks, hairbrush and towel, uses an antibacterial spray to keep her shoes from smelling, wipes her possessions with antibacterial wet tissues and feels the need to wash her hands immediately after touching escalator handles or subway straps. Germ-killing products “make me feel relieved,” she said.

The traditional Japanese equation of cleanliness with godliness has been reinforced by a recent spate of food poisonings that has killed 12 people and hospitalized hundreds, mostly children poisoned by school lunches.

However, the popularity of antibacterial products was well established long before the food poisoning scare led to a run on soaps, bleaches and disinfectants last summer. The desire for heightened hygiene seems to span all of Japanese society, from housewives to restaurant workers, but it is particularly marked among young people.

Socks Kick Off Craze

Some date the cleanliness craze to the 1987 launch of a brand of men’s dress socks called Commuting Comfort. Woven with an antibacterial thread, the socks are said to provide an inhospitable climate for the fungi that cause athlete’s foot and for other malodorous microbes.

Stinky feet cause particular social discomfort in a humid nation where people remove their shoes before entering homes, some restaurants and many other buildings. The socks became an overnight bestseller and are a staple of men’s sock counters. There are plenty of imitators, including a Calvin Klein brand of antibacterial athletic socks.

The Japanese consumer is inundated with new products that promise to kill germs, inhibit their growth or banish unpleasant odors from body, home, factory or office. A Yamaichi Securities research report estimates annual sales of about 600 such products at $4.4 billion--and growing fast.

The items range from the mundane--cutting boards and kitchen towels--to the wacky--the $336, pure-silver “Dr. Tongue” tongue-scraper for removing bacteria from the mouth.

For the truly germ-o-phobic consumer, there are antibacterial pajamas, stockings and girdles, pens and notebooks, flutes and piano keys, computer keyboards, drinking glasses, sinks and toilets. Anxious parents can buy their children antibacterial toys and treated sand for more sanitary sandboxes.

“If you put the word ‘antibacterial’ on it, you can sell anything,” said Tokyo pharmacist Yoshihiro Kagiya.

You can charge more too. “In general, 100 yen worth of product can be made antibacterial for one yen” with the addition of various types of plant-based substances such as cedar, horseradish or green tea, or inorganic ingredients, mainly zeolites (mineral derivatives), said Kazuhisa Tone, author of the antibacterial marketing report for Yamaichi Securities’ Economic Research Center. But the cachet of a “clean” product allows manufacturers to recoup those costs many times over, he said.

After a five-year recession that sparked unprecedented price deflation, manufacturers are desperate for new products that add value and justify higher prices--or at least help them escape discounting.

“A 40-yen [35-cent] ballpoint pen can sell for 200 yen [$1.75] if you make it antibacterial,” Tone said. “It’s a good strategy.”

Antibacterial Autos

Ever quick to spot nascent consumer trends and whip them into full-blown fads, Japan’s most prestigious companies have jumped into the bacteria-busting business.

In August, Toyota announced that three popular car models will have antibacterial steering wheels and other interior parts, and Matsushita introduced what it touts as the world’s first antibacterial clothes dryer. Hitachi has turned its talents to money-laundering of a literal kind, with an automated teller machine that sterilizes and irons yen-notes before dispensing them.

Hitachi did not set out to sanitize the money; its engineers were trying to lick the problem of crumpled bills, which tended to jam machines, said spokesman Kenichi Takahashi. They solved the wrinkle problem by running the bills through rollers heated to 392 degrees--any hotter would singe paper money--and discovered that the process also killed bacteria, Takahashi said.

Hitachi has sold a thousand of the “clean ATMs” in two years to banks eager to cater to the Japanese fondness for clean bills. Sanitation is only part of the attraction; guests at weddings and other ceremonies are expected to bring an envelope containing crisp, fresh money. In a pinch, people have been known to iron their bills.

Another research-and-development brain behind the boom is Shinagawa Fuel Co., Japan’s leading manufacturer of zeolites. Its product--a fine white antimicrobial powder called Zeomic--can be mixed into plastics, textiles, resins or coatings and retains its germ-killing properties even at high temperatures.

The company claims that Zeomic has passed a decade of safety tests in Japan; it has been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval, which Shinagawa hopes will come next year.

But even if approval is granted, it may take some time for Japan’s antibacterial products to make their way to American stores. “At the moment, we’re not trying to sell to America,” said one company spokesman. “The U.S. product liability law is scary.”

Meanwhile, changing attitudes toward cleanliness are altering even the hallowed tradition of the Japanese bath.

People used to gather at public baths in the evening for a scrub followed by a long, companionable soak. But now, even the poorest homes have baths, public tubs are seen as unsanitary, and bathhouses are becoming extinct. The communal bathing tradition appears to be fading even among families.

“Dad went in first, then the boys, then the girls and then the mother, and when she was through, she would clean the tub. That’s how it used to be when I was a kid,” said Toru Matsuyama, a spokesman for Nippon Lever Co.

But times have changed. Now Matsuyama, 40, is the one who scrubs his family bathtub. And many girls and young women refuse to enter water in which their fathers have steeped.

“My dad sweats a lot,” said Mai Akizawa, 17. “He wants to go in first, but I say I’m going first, so he just gives up.” Akizawa, like many of her peers, insists on sex-segregated laundry, particularly for underwear. Having her things washed with her father’s is “gross,” she declared.

“It’s not that the father is dirty; it’s that he’s a stranger in the house,” said Inada Nada, Japan’s preeminent child psychologist. People tend to harbor the subconscious belief that anyone they dislike is unclean--a father viewed as an outsider because he is never home, an older boss seen as “slimy,” or a member of a despised ethnic group, Nada said. The Japanese concepts of yogore, or dirtiness, and kegare, a spiritual taint or defilement, tend to merge in people’s minds, he said.

Fear of contamination has been accentuated by fear of AIDS, by hospital flare-ups of sometimes fatal infections caused by an antibiotic-resistant staphylococcal bacteria, by the food-poisoning outbreak that public health officials have been agonizingly slow to explain and by the Aum Supreme Truth cult’s poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway last year.

“When people don’t trust each other, all human contact is uncomfortable--and that’s the kind of age we’re living in,” Nada said.

Advertising Blitz

Advertising has exploited these personal and social insecurities. An ad for denture cleanser, for example, promises to fight old-folk bad breath--implying that all elderly people have it. Even the notion that Dad is unclean has made its way into advertising. A leaflet flogging a new shower head that cleans and deionizes water shows a girl saying, “Dad, don’t use this!”

“People are getting cleaner,” said Yoshie Nagano of the Soap Assn. A survey last summer found that 42% of Japanese homes now have toilets equipped with built-in bidets and blow dryers. The devices, which are known here as bottom-washers and are notorious for squirting unsuspecting Western tourists in the face, have such a loyal following that the manufacturer has introduced a portable bidet that fits in a handbag.

Deodorant and electric toothbrushes, which have not previously been widely used here, also are selling well, as are odor-eaters: Nippon Lever offers six kinds of hair spray for emergency removal of cigarette or sweat smells.

High school girls, who used to congregate at the cosmetic counters of department stores, now flock to discount drug stores. In Shibuya, a Tokyo youth hangout, three drugstores have opened in the prime real estate in front of the subway station.

“I come every day,” said Mari Yoshida, 18, adding, “I like to see if they have any new products.”

They usually do. Consumers can even buy new specialty pet foods that allegedly prevent animal excrement from smelling, and at least three brands of pills that claim to do the same for human waste. Young women are reportedly snapping up both.

Social critics--and even many germ-averse young women--think use of such pills is unnatural in the extreme. “More than the eccentricity of young people, this trend symbolizes the pathology of modern society,” said Furuta.

Commuter Complaints

Ironically, one of the fastidious customs for which the Japanese are famous--cloth masks for cold sufferers--is fading away in Tokyo. Pharmacist Kagiya credits the availability of drugs that suppress cold symptoms; but commuters complain about being sneezed upon in jam-packed subways.

“I always see dirty people on the subway putting their fingers in their mouths or wiping their noses with their hands, and then they touch something,” said Chika Takahashi, a 19-year-old college student who tries never to touch subway straps. “I wish they would make those subway straps antibacterial.”

The young women view middle-aged “salarymen” as singularly unsanitary.

“They stink of tobacco and liquor and I don’t know what else,” complained Konishi. “Some of them are balding, and their heads are shiny and it makes them look greasy. . . . At night, they drink, and their faces get red and they breathe on you. It’s awful.”

Lately, these targets of teen wrath are being shamed into joining the hygiene race. The gray-haired Kagiya reports that his contemporaries have begun buying mouthwash, fragrance-free shampoo, non-oily hair tonic and other products to keep from being shunned as “smelly old men.”

One nimble cosmetic company is already touting a “men’s afternoon towel” for removing that late-afternoon sheen. In the prestigious Takashimaya department store, odor-suppressing, antibacterial underwear--of the kind usually worn by middle-aged Japanese men--is sold in a package that promises, “You can always feel reassured about your hygiene.”

It’s selling briskly.

Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

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Weapons for the Germ-o-Phobic

Japanese consumers have about 600 antibacterial products to choose from. Among them:

* Computer keyboards

* Floppy disks, disk cases

* Staplers, notebooks, calculators

* Automated teller machines and ATM cards

* Floor tiles

* Car steering wheels

* Refrigerators

* Aprons

* Toilets, toilet seats

* Girdles, men’s dress shirts

* Disposable karaoke microphones