INVENTIONS: Kenji Kawakami is father of the anarchic Japanese art of 'unuseless inventions' - the portable zebra crossing, the banana opener, the double-headed toothbrush. He tells David McNeill about the Chindogu principle
Let's be frank. Kenji Kawakami looks a bit barmy: hooded eyes staring unnervingly beneath what appears to be shaved eyebrows, topped by an unruly mop of 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 explains. "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 you look, 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 might invite a visit from men in white coats. But ridicule is grist to Kawakami's philosophical mill: "If people laugh, that's fine," he says. "We need more of it. I believe in rejecting society by laughing at it."
Humour 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 began publishing his ideas, and now supposedly boasts nearly 10,000 practitioners worldwide. Art critics have joined the ranks of Chindogu fans, praising its founder as a Zen satirist of consumer society.
Kawakami's books, which have sold about 200,000 copies in Japan, have been translated into English, 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.
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. Humour must not be the only reason for making a Chindogu; it also helps 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," says 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."
This has not stopped others from using his ideas, including his two-sided slippers, which can be found on the shelves of a well-known Japanese chain store for around €7.50. "Some people have no principles," he says in disgust. "They'll do anything for money."
It's at times like this 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 turned in on itself, consuming dozens of former radicals in deadly sectarian disputes. 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.
"I'm an extremist," he says. "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 analyse any more. How else could they have elected a president like that in the United States? 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, which is why young people today don't have a clue about what is going on."
Although most of his radical energy now goes into his inventions, Kawakami's hatred for America, and its subservient Asian ally, is undimmed. "In Europe they treat me as an artist, a new Dadaist [which prized irrationality and anarchy]. In Australia and Canada, I'm called a scientist. In China and Hong Kong 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."
Does he make any money from his work? "Not really," he laughs. "I publish the inventions myself, so I have to find models for the photos, 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."
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 creator, who calls himself a purveyor of "invention art", is confident. "Everybody has the ability to create things. 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."