Kenji Kawakami’s Nearly Useless Inventing

Images Courtesy of W.W.Norton & Company

Kenji Kawakami, inventor of the absurd, sits across from me in his basement lab bordering the ancient Kanda waterway in Tokyo.

The room is a chaos of discarded circuit boards, wooden puppets and model airplanes. Kawakami smokes cough-suppressing cigarettes and speaks about ants.

“Somewhere on this planet, out of the billions of people, there must be about ten who are devising ways to get ants to smoke tobacco as well,” he puffs. Kawakami’s expertise is pondering unimaginable subjects. He asks me, “why do people love to prominently display flowers—which are the reproductive organs of plants—but not the reproductive organs of humans?”

That’s the kind of unconventional thinking that has made him one of the world’s most outstanding creators of absurd inventions, specifically “unuseless inventions”—devices that seem superficially practical, but are actually totally bothersome. One example is the Hay Fever Hat, a toilet paper dispenser that you strap on to your head for a continuous supply of tissues during allergy season. Another: the Full Body Umbrella, a brolly with a curtain of transparent plastic for head-to-toe protection from stray raindrops. Kawakami calls these creations Chindogu, which means “strange tool” in Japanese.

Though hilarious, they aren’t party gags. Chindogu are epistemological IEDs. They militate against the tyranny of utilitarianism in product design, and come with their own philosophy. Among the Ten Tenets of Chindogu: they must be nearly totally useless, they are not to be sold or patented, and they embody the spirit of anarchy.

“A Chindogu is a tool that is excessively inconvenient when used,” Kawakami explains. “If it’s convenient, it’s not Chindogu. If it’s really inconvenient, then it’s a great Chindogu!”

He demonstrates one of his latest gadgets with an impish grin. It’s an alarm clock with a very slender “off” button. You’d be tempted to smack it in the morning to catch a few more winks—if only a bed of spikes did not surround the button. Then he pulls out a pair of geta—paulownia clogs—with thongs on either end so that they never have to be reversed when entering and leaving home. A great idea, but the clogs are almost twice as long as normal geta. Hence, they’re Chindogu.

“Somewhere on this planet, out of the billions of people, there must be about ten who are devising ways to get ants to smoke tobacco as well,”

Kawakami has created about 700 Chindogu over roughly 20 years. They are everyday objects ranging from Shiatsu Shoes to the Portable Lamp Post to the Rotating Spaghetti Fork. Since 1990, they have appeared in books like his three-volume series Gakuri Hassou (Paradox Ideas, 2005) and 99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions, a popular English translation from 1998. He has also appeared in numerous media in Japan and overseas.

Kawakami was born in 1946 in Nara Prefecture near Kyoto, and developed an inventor streak early on. In high school, he devised a cart-like vehicle from salvaged scooter parts. While studying aerospace at Tokai University, he invented a glider bicycle that didn’t fly. Undeterred, he dropped out of college and joined Japanese leftist radical movements, throwing his fair share of rocks at policemen before settling into the publishing trade. But his subversive streak never went away. It’s apparent in Chindogu like the Commuter’s Helmet, a hardhat equipped with a suction cup that fixes an office worker’s head in place for napping on the train.

Where do these ideas come from? Kawakami regularly does “brain training” to become better at thinking outside the box, like imagining genitalia bouquets. “Imagination is the greatest human ability,” he notes. Then he applies his thoughts to one of five invention categories: the two-in-one, the all-in-one, diversified functionality, improvements, and new concepts. The Ten-in-One Gardening Tool exemplifies the second—it’s basically an enormous Swiss Army penknife of trowels, hoes and weeding implements.

“Imagination is the greatest human ability,”

“I also draw inspiration from observing things and people and daily inconveniences,” he adds. “Like watching commuters being jostled aboard a swaying train.” That experience gave birth to the Portable Subway Strap, a toilet plunger with a ring at one end that can be affixed to the ceiling of a carriage for a steady handhold.

Kawakami firmly believes that people should take up the art of Chindogu so they can change their perspective on life and improve society. His inventions are apolitical (Tenet No. 7: “Chindogu are not propaganda”) but they do embody a political subtext. “It’s not only creating objects as inventions, but mental inventions can be Chindogu too,” says Kawakami.

Chindogu, then, is more than an invention, it’s a state of mind. By forcing us to grapple with the absurd, Kawakami opens up our imaginations to unknown possibilities of thought and creativity. So next time you happen to see a Portable Zebra Crossing, don’t dismiss it out of hand. It may fail nobly in being practical, but it certainly will have changed your perspective. What could be more useful than that?