The Weird Joy of Chindogu
December 15, 2022 5:54 PM Subscribe
"Chindogu is a Japanese word meaning “weird tool.” These (almost) useless inventions might address a challenge, but they also create bigger problems....While inventions like these are usually not practical for their intended purpose, they can still be charming, evocative, and funny, and give us something that successful inventions can’t. They offer a moment’s deviation from some prescribed path to success, a pause in the slog of value creation, to allow a moment’s worth of weird joy....The Chindogu Society has published ten underlying – and surprisingly deep – tenets. They espouse an endearing earnestness, speak to the bizarre failures of late-stage capitalism, and underline Chindogu’s appeal across cultural and linguistic divides, offering more interesting musings on failure than most of our fables or motivational posters in the process."
Liam Grace-Flood has written an interesting and charming reflection on those tenets for The Prepared. (Chindogu, previously)
Liam Grace-Flood has written an interesting and charming reflection on those tenets for The Prepared. (Chindogu, previously)
It seems weird that an article about something that seems very rooted in Japanese culture, down to the name, has 90% of its examples from Westerners - many of which made work that contradicts the very tenets of Chindogu (e.g. "Chindogu aren't for sale" - but here are people selling them anyway). The writer already establishes that not every useless invention is Chindogu, so why try to contradict that later on?
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:01 PM on December 15, 2022
posted by creatrixtiara at 7:01 PM on December 15, 2022
it is also unclear to me how much the Chindogu Society is just this one guy, and a bunch of Westerners reifying the idea of Weird Japan. It'd be like a bunch of German people taking Rube Goldberg as somehow emblematic of how a distinctive minority of Americans live their daily lives.
posted by Merus at 7:12 PM on December 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Merus at 7:12 PM on December 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
wow, I remember these books ("Un-Useless Japanese Inventions") from the nineties
I'm pretty sure that the one guy who was the "Chindogu Society" has kind of long ago just retired from his hobby
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:19 PM on December 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm pretty sure that the one guy who was the "Chindogu Society" has kind of long ago just retired from his hobby
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:19 PM on December 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Make them instead with the best intentions.
This entire concept is just so good, and feels spiritually adjacent to the notion of the Thomasson, which more than a decade later remains one of the blue's all time great posts.
posted by mhoye at 7:20 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
This entire concept is just so good, and feels spiritually adjacent to the notion of the Thomasson, which more than a decade later remains one of the blue's all time great posts.
posted by mhoye at 7:20 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
in fact, some of the quotes in the article are even verbatim from those books, now that I RTFA
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:21 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:21 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Chindogu are in essence an over-engineered, technical solution to a physical or social inconvenience/problem. The beauty, to me, lies in being able to see these inconveniences very clearly. A good Chindogu is like finally giving a name to a real but insignificant unnamed phenomenon. It speaks of our needs.
Last year I've been teaching Introduction to Product Design to first year students at HfG Karlsruhe. Just an intro to all kinds of approaches of how to design objects for body and space, and how to unlearn the rigidity of a school system in which body and space are not important. Part of that was letting the students design and create seven of their own Chindogu in one week. They did great.
I've written down what they did here – https://rybakov.com/teaching/object.space.body/ – see №4 and 5 for their Chindogu projects. (also they had to create their own websites for documenting the objects, but that's a whole other story).
posted by javanlight at 7:28 PM on December 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
Last year I've been teaching Introduction to Product Design to first year students at HfG Karlsruhe. Just an intro to all kinds of approaches of how to design objects for body and space, and how to unlearn the rigidity of a school system in which body and space are not important. Part of that was letting the students design and create seven of their own Chindogu in one week. They did great.
I've written down what they did here – https://rybakov.com/teaching/object.space.body/ – see №4 and 5 for their Chindogu projects. (also they had to create their own websites for documenting the objects, but that's a whole other story).
posted by javanlight at 7:28 PM on December 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
The one guy is Kenji Kawakami.
He was an editor of the magazine Mail Order Life, and started putting his 'useless inventions' in the magazine. This later led to books (I had some of his early books which I used to read to my kids when they were little--they loved the creativity and nonsense of it), and then to the Chindogu Society. It is entirely Japanese, but it certainly resonates with Westerners too.
posted by eye of newt at 7:28 PM on December 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
He was an editor of the magazine Mail Order Life, and started putting his 'useless inventions' in the magazine. This later led to books (I had some of his early books which I used to read to my kids when they were little--they loved the creativity and nonsense of it), and then to the Chindogu Society. It is entirely Japanese, but it certainly resonates with Westerners too.
posted by eye of newt at 7:28 PM on December 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
Reminds me a bit of Simone Giertz and some of her work.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 8:10 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 8:10 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
javanlight, I like the rotating spatula sketched on your page there, but it is not new - I was gifted a vintage one à few years ago :)
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:34 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:34 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Chindogu in Japanese is 珍道具. The last two characters, 道具 dogu, do indeed mean tool. But the first one 珍 chin, has a somewhat more positive spin than "weird" does. More like "rare" or "unusual" or "curious".
That's an important nuance because it means you find these inventions amusing and forgivably hubbable rahter than just, well, weird.
posted by mono blanco at 8:43 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
That's an important nuance because it means you find these inventions amusing and forgivably hubbable rahter than just, well, weird.
posted by mono blanco at 8:43 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Those original books from the 90s featured a pre-cameraphone selfie-stick. Genius!
posted by stevil at 8:50 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by stevil at 8:50 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Just the other day I invented wearing a cat as a hat, which worked really well until I went outside in the rain. The cat didn't like that very much, but neither did I.
posted by loquacious at 9:47 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by loquacious at 9:47 PM on December 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is so wonderfully, delightfully, perfectly metamodern!
All of this everywhere is my new favorite thing.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:35 AM on December 16, 2022
“While modernism is about creating something completely new (which you could argue is an illusion); postmodernism is about deconstructing the past and rejecting the future; pseudo-modernism is about mindless online consumerism—metamodernism is about creating something new with what was created before, while acknowledging the inherent ephemerality of the human condition.”Even Greg Dember's 11 metamodernist methods speak to Chindogu's tenets.
All of this everywhere is my new favorite thing.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:35 AM on December 16, 2022
Adjacent? In my 'mind'? Sally Swain Great Housewives of Art. Mrs Toulouse-lautrec cleans the toilet. Mrs Klimt sews a patchwork quilt. Mrs Degas vacuums the floor etc.
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:44 AM on December 16, 2022
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:44 AM on December 16, 2022
Marina Fujiwara refers to her products (and brand) as 無駄づくり - mudazukuri - or useless (or wasteful) things. She really makes use of 3D printing.
The possibilities of the shape of Hokkaido
A coffee cup holder to use on traffic cones
A QR code mask
Turning your crocs into business shoes
posted by LostInUbe at 3:45 PM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
The possibilities of the shape of Hokkaido
A coffee cup holder to use on traffic cones
A QR code mask
Turning your crocs into business shoes
posted by LostInUbe at 3:45 PM on December 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Chindogu "珍道具" was a regular segment on the BBC Children's TV series It'll Never Work? in the 90s. There are a couple of episodes on youtube.
This show is an indelible memory for me*. Even though it's produced for a young audience, it does cover a lot of ground in the experimentation, design and engineering of products. I avoid using the term 'useless' when discussing inventions. Regardless of commercial success each is solving a problem for someone and every example is a great way to introduce and analyze the concepts of human centric design.
* From the perfect selection of opening theme Depeche Mode - People are people the soundtrack is a showcase of banging 90s electronica/big beat/dub featuring William Orbit, Leftfield, Chemical Brothers, Groove Corporation and others.
posted by boffin police at 11:42 AM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
This show is an indelible memory for me*. Even though it's produced for a young audience, it does cover a lot of ground in the experimentation, design and engineering of products. I avoid using the term 'useless' when discussing inventions. Regardless of commercial success each is solving a problem for someone and every example is a great way to introduce and analyze the concepts of human centric design.
* From the perfect selection of opening theme Depeche Mode - People are people the soundtrack is a showcase of banging 90s electronica/big beat/dub featuring William Orbit, Leftfield, Chemical Brothers, Groove Corporation and others.
posted by boffin police at 11:42 AM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
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