TOKYO - Kawakami Kenji's weird inventions
have brought him notoriety in his native Japan,
and in Europe, where some call him a surrealist
genius and even a neo-Dadaist. But there is method
in his madness.
Let's be frank. Kawakami looks
a bit barmy: hooded eyes staring unnervingly
beneath what appears to be shaved eyebrows, topped
by an unruly mop of spindly hair. And this is
before he happily poses for photographs with a
toilet-
roll dispenser on his
head. "It's for sufferers of hay fever," he
explained. "They blow their noses a lot."
We are in Kawakami's pokey office in
central Tokyo, which is messier than an art
student's apartment, thanks to his
weird inventions - a total of 600 dreamt up
over 10 years. Everywhere there are things that
look like props from a Monty Python show:
duster slippers for cats, self-lighting
cigarettes, a portable zebra crossing, a
double-headed toothbrush.
Some of the
inventions look vaguely useful: I quite fancy the
noodle cooler (a fan stuck to a pair of
chopsticks), although actually using them outside
the house invites a visit from men in white coats.
But ridicule is grist to Kawakami's philosophical
mill: "If people laugh, that's fine. We need more
of it. I believe in rejecting society by laughing
at it."
Humor is part of the art of
Chindogu, which translates roughly as weird or
unusual tool, but which some have dubbed "the
Japanese art of useless inventions". The Chindogu
movement has become something of a cult since
Kawakami founded it more than a decade ago and
began publishing his ideas. Pictures of his
inventions have been popping up in office e-mail
inboxes for years, along with snaps of their
poker-faced creator, often wearing them on his
head.
Now boasting nearly 10,000
practitioners worldwide, according to Kawakami,
there is even an International Chindogu Society
run out of the US. Art critics have joined the
ranks of Chindogu fans, praising its founder as a
Zen satirist of consumer society, and Chindogu
exhibitions are often staged around the world. In
the US, however, the finer points of his critique
of capitalism are sometimes lost. "Chindogu is
considered radical in other parts of the world,"
Kawakami said. "But in America they just laugh at
the weird Japanese inventor."
His books,
which have sold about 200,000 copies in Japan,
have been translated into English (101
Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of
Chindogu and 99 More Unuseless Japanese
Inventions, both published by WW Norton &
Co), French, Chinese, German and Spanish, and he
makes regular appearances on the BBC and other
European TV stations. Barely a month goes by
without a media invitation coming through the fax
machine, along with diagrams for banana-openers,
spaghetti-cutters and portable toilet seats from
Chindogu enthusiasts around the world.
Kawakami himself, tongue
firmly buried in cheek, says his creations are
"strangely practical and utterly eccentric
inventions designed to solve all the nagging
problems of domestic life". When he is being
serious he will describe them as "invention
dropouts", ideas that have broken free from "the
suffocating historical dominance of conservative
utility". "I describe them as
unuseless. Technically they are convenient and you
can use them but most won't because of shame."
It all seems like harmless fun, but
Chindogu has a serious philosophy and set of
rules. The inventions cannot be for real use, for
example, but they must work, and they cannot be
patented or sold. And humor must not be the only
reason for making a Chindogu. It also helps a lot
if you have the spirit of an anarchist and hate
the way the world is run.
"I despise
materialism and how everything is turned into a
commodity," said the 57-year-old inventor, while
chugging on the first of an endless supply of
cigarettes. "Things that should belong to everyone
are patented and turned into private property.
I've never registered a patent and I never will
because the world of patents is dirty, full of
greed and competition."
So opposed is he
to getting his hands dirty with filthy lucre that
Murakami waives the interview fees many
professional authors charge in Japan and gives the
money he makes from his books and articles to his
favorite causes. He says he began small,
publishing his photos as a hobby in magazines (he
still runs a small publishing business) before
being inundated with requests for articles and
then books. "I made little money from the
inventions," he said with a laugh. "I did the
photos myself, so I had to find models, and pay
for the printing and packaging. But I'd like to
make more and set up a foundation to rid the world
of landmines. Look at how the big powers create
weapons that hurt little innocent people. I hate
that."
This has not stopped others from
stealing his ideas, including his two-sided
slippers, which can be found retailing for 1,000
yen (US$9) on the shelves of a well-known Japanese
chain store. "Some people have no principles," he
said in disgust. "They'll do anything for money."
Murakami's anti-materialism appears
genuine: He has the casual everyman look of an
off-duty corporate worker and has not changed the
oversized glasses he has worn for years. He is not
married and has no children to send to private
school. The only apparent concession to bourgeois
luxury is the old 7-series BMW that sits outside
his office, but a thick layer of dust makes it
clear that the car has not moved in years. "I'm
not much of a driver," he said.
It's at
times like this that Kawakami sounds most like the
radical young activist he once was, one of
thousands in Japan who graduated from student
politics in the 1960s to direct action in the
1970s and 1980s. The key issues were the Vietnam
War and Japan's subservience to capitalist
America, but after years of guerilla-style
violence against the authorities, the movement
eventually became dominated by small leftwing
sects and turned in on itself, consuming dozens of
former radicals in deadly sectarian disputes.
About 100 activists were killed in what
was called uchigeba, or internecine warfare
among the sects. Many more resigned themselves to
life in the system they fought. Kawakami decided
to lampoon it, after what one can only imagine was
a very unhappy spell as editor of a home-shopping
magazine. He began his creative career writing
scripts for animated TV series. He later designed
the Tokyo Bicycle Museum.
"I'm an
extremist," he said. "I believe we have to do
extreme things to make people think about this
society and to question common sense. I want
people to question everything because they don't
think and analyze any more. How else could they
have elected a president like that in the United
States? He's an idiot. But I think my generation
failed to change the world. I don't regret
fighting the system but I regret that we ended up
fighting ourselves. We set a bad example for the
young, which is why today they don't have a clue
about what is going on."
Although most of
his radical energy now goes into his inventions,
Murakami's hatred for America, and its subservient
Asian ally, is undimmed. "In Europe they treat me
as an artist, a new Dadaist [after the early
20th-century art movement that held irrationality
and anarchy as the only rational responses to a
world gone mad]. In Australia and Canada, I'm
called a scientist. In China and Hong they wonder
why I don't try to make money from my inventions.
But in Japan and the US, they consider me a maker
of party goods. People have been trained not to
think in Japan and America. I think it's quite
natural to hate America, its lack of logic and its
brutality. But Japan is pitiable, too, the way it
follows everything the US does."
In the
meantime, the world's Chindogu enthusiasts wait
for Kawakami's next book. Can he top the Drymobile
(a clothesline
attached to a car) and the Hold-It
Helmet (a hat with a clipboard to allow reading on
the move)? Their crackpot creator, who calls
himself a purveyor of "invention art", is
confident. "I think my things show us our stupid
obsession in Japan and America with making life as
easy as we can with a new thing. Everybody has the
ability to create. We just have to free our
imaginations. The problem is that this society
destroys our ability to think. We have to get this
ability back."
David McNeill is
a Tokyo-based journalist who teaches at Sophia
University in Tokyo and is a regular contributor
to a number of publications, including the London
Independent and the Irish Times. He is a Japan
Focus Coordinator.
TOKYO - Kawakami Kenji's weird inventions
have brought him notoriety in his native Japan,
and in Europe, where some call him a surrealist
genius and even a neo-Dadaist. But there is method
in his madness. 
duster slippers for cats, self-lighting
cigarettes, a portable zebra crossing, a
double-headed toothbrush. 
Humor is part of the art of
Chindogu, which translates roughly as weird or
unusual tool, but which some have dubbed "the
Japanese art of useless inventions". The Chindogu
movement has become something of a cult since
Kawakami founded it more than a decade ago and
began publishing his ideas. Pictures of his
inventions have been popping up in office e-mail
inboxes for years, along with snaps of their
poker-faced creator, often wearing them on his
head. 
unuseless. Technically they are convenient and you
can use them but most won't because of shame."
attached to a car) and the Hold-It
Helmet (a hat with a clipboard to allow reading on
the move)? Their crackpot creator, who calls
himself a purveyor of "invention art", is
confident. "I think my things show us our stupid
obsession in Japan and America with making life as
easy as we can with a new thing. Everybody has the
ability to create. We just have to free our
imaginations. The problem is that this society
destroys our ability to think. We have to get this
ability back." 
