The Problem With Japanese Inventions…

We’ve all read the books and – for those for whom books are anathema – the websites about the zany Japanese inventions designed to improve day-to-day life.

Butter in a glue stick, slippers with a retractable rod in the heel to squash cockroaches from a distance, double-headed jugs so you can pour two glasses of water at a time, and my absolute favourite: the hardhat with a suction cup on the back, so you can attach yourself to the train window on the way home and fall asleep without your head falling into your chest.

The problem with these inventions is that they seem to ignore one fairly major factor in the success of a new product: will it embarrass me?

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Kusho – "Writing in the Sky"

To put it simply, Shinichi Maruyama hurls black India ink into water (or vice versa) and photographs the millisecond that these two liquids collide.

Maruyama takes full advantage of a recent advancement in strobe light technology which can record physical events faster than the naked eye can perceive them – 1/7500th of a second, in fact.

In the series Kusho, which means “writing in the sky,” Maruyama’s goal is to arrest in space and time the sublime intersection of two different media before they merge into one.

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Goemon – A film by Kazuaki Kiriya

Goemon - A visual feast from Kazuaki Kiriya

Whilst many people outside Japan are familiar with Anime (Japanese animation), Manga (Japanese graphic novels/comics) and Doramas (Televised Japanese dramas), Japanese films are often a hit and miss affair.

I stumbled upon Goemon whilst I was flying home from Tokyo last September. I was familiar with Kazuaki Kiriya’s earlier film, Casshern, which is about one hour too long and 50 plots too many.

Despite that, it was achingly stylish. Think Bleach or Naruto meets Final Fantasy (the game, not the awful one off movie). So with some reservation, but in the Australian spirit of mateship, I gave Goemon a… go.

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Everyday Japan In Photos, And A Brief History

Take ten ‘Japanophiles’ and ask what it is that draws them to the ‘land of the rising sun’ – the odds are good that, as long as they’re not all from the same anime club, you’ll get a different answer from each of them.

Delve a bit deeper, beyond the simple declarations of love for Japanese cars, animation and girls/boys, and most will acknowledge that the general way of life in Japan – the ‘Dò’ – plays its own part in their fascination with the country.

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