Chindōgu: The Japanese Art of “Unuseless” Inventions

Chindōgu is the Japanese practice of inventing things that are not exactly useful but neither are they useless; they’re more unuseless, a term coined by chindōgu’s originator Kenji Kawakami. Some examples are tiny umbrellas for shoes, chopsticks with a tiny fan on them to cool your noodles before you slurp them, a flu headset (basically a roll of toilet paper you wear as a hat), and onion chopping glasses that have little fans that blow the onion fumes away from your eyes so you don’t start crying. This video explains chindōgu and provides some examples:

This is a great explainer as well, with lots of images and videos of examples, like this one:

Chindōgu have to be made. If you design the invention on paper and don’t make it, it doesn’t qualify. It’s a piece of paper with a bad invention on it. Bring the invention into the physical world so humankind can experience how truly almost useless it is.

Related: How the selfie stick was invented twice.

• Japan
• video