Flushed with embarrassment: Japan’s oldest toilet damaged in car crash

The oldest existing toilet in Japan, dating back 500 years, has been damaged after a car, driven by employee of an organisation which protects heritage buildings, crashed into it.

A 30-year-old man - who works for the Kyoto Heritage Preservation Association - rammed his vehicle into the tosu facilities on the grounds of Tofukuji temple in Kyoto.

Although no longer in use, the tosu toilet is an important cultural property that was built nearly 500 years ago at the Zen Buddhist temple in the first half of the Muromachi period.

The toilet features a row of 20 holes roughly 30 centimetres deep and was used by Buddhist monks under training.

The incident took place around 9.30am when the man mistakenly put his vehicle into reverse when starting it, thus slamming it into the entrance of the toilet.

Part of the room's over-two-metre-tall double door and interior pillars were damaged, but no one was injured.

Following the crash, the man behind the wheels called the police to inform them about the incident.

Photos in local media showed a 20-year-old Toyota WiLL Vi inside the building with parts of the broken door around it.

“We are relieved that the damage is repairable,” Keishu Nagai, head of the temple’s treasure house management office, was quoted as saying by the Asahi Shimbun.

“We’d like to somehow restore it to its original state.”

It is believed that the toilet was used up until the beginning of the Meiji Era in Japan, which extended from the 1860s through to the early 1900s.

Toshio Ishikawa, director of the temple’s research institute, told the Kyoto Shimbun that he was “stunned” by the extent of the damage.

“We’d like to restore it before the autumn foliage season, but it will probably take until the new year.”