NEW YORK — Every so often a revolution transforms something truly basic, rendering the status quo somewhat, well, primitive.
First came covered sewers, then indoor plumbing and flush toilets. Now, one bathroom at a time, another major shift in toilet hygiene is quietly underway. A new generation of toilets may one day make toilet paper — and the need to put one's hands anywhere near the unspeakable — seem like chamber pots and outhouses: outdated and somewhat messy throwbacks reserved for camping trips.
Unlike traditional toilets, the high-tech version washes from behind and — if desired — in front with water. Better models allow for temperature, direction and pressure control, and have retractable spritzing wands and automatic driers as well. The best feature warm seats, automatic motion sensors to raise the lid, buttons to raise the seat, nightlights, self-cleaning mechanisms, music to mask unpleasant sounds, deodorizer spritzers and other conveniences.
KATHERINE ROTH/AP
This photo shows TOTO Washlet high tech toilets in the TOTO showroom in the Soho neighborhood of New York.
"Paper just distributes the problem," said Lenora Campos, a spokeswoman for Georgia-based Toto USA. Toto, the Japanese company that pioneered the modern electronic toilet seat, has sold 34 million of them globally. "We wash most things with water and wouldn't dream of wiping a dish or anything else with a piece of paper and calling it clean. So why should personal hygiene be any different?"
Toto began marketing the Washlet in Japan in 1980. Now 74 percent of Japanese households have toilets of the high-tech persuasion, making them more common there than home computers.
The concept of electronic toilets that cleanse with water — widely known as bidet toilets or Washlets — has spread internationally over time, and dozens of companies around the world, including Inax, Brondell and Kohler, are producing them.
AP
A rendering of an Ultra High Efficiency Dual Flush Cyclone Flush Engine of a high tech toilet, Neorest 750H.
Although most popular in Asia, basic versions are becoming standard in much of the Middle East and South America, where cleansing with water has long been preferred to paper. They are finally becoming more popular in Europe, where "boudoir paper" was introduced in the 19th century, and in equally paper-centric North America.
They have been a long time coming.
In the U.S., "bidets were always seen as European, and an oddity of the French," said Rose George, author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters" (Metropolitan Books, 2008).
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In addition to general squeamishness about discussing the way we clean ourselves, some in the U.S. worried about the high-tech toilets' requirement that a grounded electrical outlet be nearby, or thought the early control panels made the toilets look clumsy.
That said, the predecessor to modern high-tech toilets was actually invented in the United States, by Arnold Cohen of Brooklyn, who patented a pedal-operated seat he'd designed as a sort of sophisticated sitz-bath to help his ailing father. He founded the American Bidet Company in 1964, marketing his product as an "American way to bidet" and "the first wash and dry toilet." But the subject was considered too vulgar for ads.
"I installed thousands of my seats all over the suburbs of New York, and we had offices all across the country," said Cohen, whose company still exists. "But advertising was a next-to-impossible challenge. Nobody wants to hear about Tushy Washing 101."
The place where his invention really took off was Japan. "I licensed to the Toto company and sent container after container to Japan," said Cohen, whose patent later expired
be it is common practise in America - which could explain the fact that they use more breath fresheners and 
