I have read through the threads in this forum on rear windows. My question is pretty specific, and I couldn't find an answer anywhere. There is some sort of sensor to detect retraction of the rear window wiper, which prevents the window from operating unless the rear wiper is fully retracted.

Where exactly is this sensor located? Window worked fine until I accidentally hit the rear wiper control. It did a little dance, and ends up staying down on the glass, not quite fully retracted. It's like the 4 runner gets confused and only randomly can find the seated position. I am wondering if there is some proximity sensor (in the little black cradle where that stupid wiper rests). Can I manually force it into place and trigger the damned thing? Hoestly I would just like to remove the rear wiper entirely, since I never use it, and don't really need it any more than I need a rear wiper on either of my sedans (which don't have them). Any help to be offered would be great. Thanks!

Forcing it sounds like a bad idea, try popping the small cap off of the very end of it ( the end that connects to the truck) you should be able to just remove it all together from underneath that cap.

Edit to add: I don't know about the guts of Toyota stuff yet, but on a ford cruiser i have, there's a notch on the wiper motor that 'cuts in' for lack of better words, to make the motor go into reverse, and therefor park itself. When that gets broken off ( by forcing the arm ) it will never work properly and have to be replaced, or in your case, removed.

Hard to tell not knowing what truck-year you're talking about. On the first-gen, it does ont look like a switch at all- just a contact that connects to ground as soon as wiper leaves park position, it's right on the wiper motor assembly itself.

I have an 87 with the same problem. We just zip-tied the wiper in the up position.