page_title: Shit stick
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Shit stick / History
context_page_description: Shit stick means "a thin stake or stick used instead of toilet paper" for anal hygiene and was a historical item of material culture introduced through Chinese Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism. A well-known example is gānshǐjué/kanshiketsu from the Chan/Zen gōng'àn/kōan in which a monk asked "What is buddha?" and Master Yunmen/Unmon answered "A dry shit stick".
context_section_description: People have used many different materials in the history of anal cleansing, including leaves, rags, paper, water, sponges, corncobs, and sticks.
  According to the historians of Chinese science Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, 
  In very ancient times, instruments of bamboo, possibly spatulas ([cèchóu] 廁籌, [cèbì] 廁篦, or [cèjiǎn] 廁簡), may have been used with the assistance of water in cleaning the body after defecation. At other times and places, it seems that pieces of earthenware or pottery were so used. Undoubtedly one material which found employment in this respect was waste silk rag. (Needham 1970: 373)
  When monks and missionaries introduced Buddhism into China and Japan, they also brought the Indian custom of using a śalākā "small stake, stick, or rod" for wiping away excrement. Translators rendered this Sanskrit word into a number of different neologisms such as Chinese cèchóu 廁籌 and Japanese chūgi 籌木, and the custom of using shit sticks became popular. They had advantages of being inexpensive, washable, and reusable.
  The Chinese invented paper around the 2nd century BCE, and toilet paper no later than the 6th century CE, when Yan Zhitui noted, "Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes" (tr. Needham 1986: 123).
  The earliest Japanese flush toilets date from the Nara period (710–784), when a drainage system was constructed in the capital at Nara, with squat toilets built over 10–15 cm wide wooden conduits that users would straddle. Archaeological excavations in Nara have also found numerous chūgi wooden sticks that were used for fecal cleansing (Chavez 2014). (Matsui et al. 2003: 133) explain that Japanese archeologists have discovered comparatively few toilets because "the decisive factors in identifying toilets were fly maggots and flat sticks called chugi used as a toilet paper", but preservation of such artifacts requires the environment of a wetland site where organic remains are constantly soaked with groundwater.
  Archeologists discovered 2,000-year-old shit sticks in a latrine at Xuanquanzhi 悬泉置, in the town of Dunhuang, Gansu. Xuanquanzhi was a Han dynasty military base and relay station (111 BCE – CE 109) at the eastern end of the Silk Road. Analysis of preserved fecal matter found on cloth covers wrapped around the ends of sticks revealed the remains of roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), tapeworm (Taenia solium), and Chinese liver fluke (Clonorchis sinensis) (Yeh et al. 2016; Bower 2016; Newitz 2016).
caption: Japanese chūgi from the Nara period (710–784), shown with modern toilet paper for size comparison.
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