Chindogu

I got wondering after my last post how many useless inventions there actually are in the world. Probably too many to count. After a bit of research, I quickly found that there was a book published in 1995 by an author named Kenji Kawakami, who is well-known in Japan for his creation and tireless promotion of "chingdogu" -- the art of the "unuseless idea." The book is called " 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions" and there's also a second book called "99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions" available now.

This book is the best of his inventions, inspired devices designed to solve all the annoying problems of domestic life, including ones you may not even realize you have yet. Reading this book is like traveling to an alternate universe. It's pretty fucked. There's now also a second book called "99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions".

Some of the photos below are just a few of the ridiculous inventions this guy has dreamed up. Follow the links for more pictures from these books plus other interesting links of interest:

http://students.ou.edu/R/Basil.G.Rayan-1/
http://winn.com/bs/invent.html
http://unix.rulez.org/~calver/pictures/japanese_inventions/index.html
http://thenonist.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/chindogu/
http://thybag.co.uk/index.php?p=Archive&type=Inventions