You must be awfully young -- or have a defective memory.
When the article said, "Japanese toilet", I pictured the only kind I ever saw -- the "benjo" squat over the hole in the floor type:
And -- the one pictured is far fancier than the basic model -- just a hole in the floor...
the basic model — just a hole in the floor...
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The Soviets had those. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union I saw them filled with Soviet rubles. Their value had fallen so low they were used as toilet paper.
Never got the “squat” notion...
In that same space, they could have put a standard sit-down model... rounded, with room for knees.
