Toilet god

Such deities have been associated with health, well-being and fertility (because of the association between human waste and agriculture) and have been propitiated in a wide variety of ways, including making offerings, invoking and appeasing them through prayers, meditating and carrying out ritual actions such as clearing one's throat before entering or even biting the latrine to transfer spiritual forces back to the god.

In Japan, belief in the toilet god or kawaya kami, most often depicted in the form of Ususama-myō-ō (烏枢沙摩明王), served a dual purpose.

This presented an obvious and painful threat when squatting down to defecate, so it was regarded as necessary to clear one's throat before entering so that the blind toilet god would sheathe his spear.

[3] The American anthropologist John Embree recorded in the 1930s that the inhabitants of part of the southernmost Japanese island of Kyūshū would put a branch of willow or Chinese nettle tree, decorated with pieces of mochi (rice cake), into the toilet as an offering to ask the toilet god to protect the house's inhabitants from bladder problems in the coming year.

[4] The Ainu people of far northern Japan and the Russian Far East believed that the Rukar Kamuy, their version of a toilet god, would be the first to come to help in the event of danger.

The pig toilet (ふーる / 風呂), lacking this benevolent god, could become a place of evil influence and potential haunting (such as by an akaname,[6] or other negative spirits, welcomed by the accumulation of waste matter, rejected and abandoned by the human body).

Because he is considered a primary household god, the fuuru nu kami's habitat (the bathroom) is kept clean and is perceived to warrant deferential behavior.

[10] Women worshipped her in the form of a home-made doll on the fifteenth day of each year's first month, when she was ritually summoned in the latrine during the night.

Another interpretation came from a popular novel of the Ming period, which portrayed the latrine deity as three sisters who were responsible for the Primeval Golden Dipper (hunyuan jindou) or celestial toilet bowl, from which all beings were born.

A cult developed around Ucchuṣma in Zen monasteries where the latrine, the bath and the meditation hall or refectory were regarded as the three "silent places" (sanmokudō) for contemplation.

They additionally propitiated Stercutius (named from stercus or excrement), the god of dung, who was particularly important to farmers when fertilising their fields with manure.