Masahiko Kajita is not exactly a household name, but this Doctor Dolittle of Japan's No.2 toymaker, Takara Co is the brains behind the smash-hit dog-language electronic interpreter Bowlingual.
Kajita, 41, took charge of Takara's "Dr Dolittle Project" in August 2001 and developed Bowlingual, after establishing a long pedigree of wacky gizmos ranging from the "romantic bus stop" to a time bomb alarm clock for the company.
PHOTO: AFP
One of Takara's top salesmen for 18 years, Kajita switched to the creative side in 1999 after criticizing his wares once too often.
At the time Takara was suffering from weak sales despite its high brand recognition as the manufacturer of Licca-chan dolls, a Japanese version of Barbie.
"I was such a brash salesman and always complaining about products that I was told to make them myself," he said.
Takara's road to recovery came after Keita Sato, second son of the founder Yasuta Sato, took control and embarked on a shake-up of the 45-year old company in 2000.
Kajita said he hung up on a call from a head-hunter and decided to stay on after Sato gave him a freer hand at work.
The result was the "Nanchatte" (just kidding) series of tricky toys, starting from January 2000 with Kajita's banana-shaped handset for use with cellphones, which proved to be a hit and helped revive the fortunes of the near-bankrupt company.
The series later included lurid pink paper tissue holder that sets off a female voice panting in erotic delight whenever it is used. The product has since been taken off market.
More popular items still on sale include his "Let's Beer Great," syphon and beer tap for a single can of beer that allows the home drinker to play barman for ¥3,480 (US$29.50).
For those who want to taste a life of luxury on the cheap, "Cleopatra's Bath" -- at ¥3,480 a golden lion-head fountainhead made of plastic which sticks to the wall with a sucker -- takes in water from the bathtub and returns it out of its mouth.
Before Bowlingual, Kajita also came up with the cheap and cheeful "Romantic Bus Stop" to get round one of the stickier areas of human communication.
The toy is a replica of a request-stop button from a bus that can be stuck on the dashboard of a car. When a passenger pushes it, it says "The next stop is the final one -- my room."
Kajita also dreamed up a way to start one's day with a bang with his "Dynamite" time bomb alarm that drops from the ceiling with a boom when the time comes.
A whimsical offer for the executive with a tight budget is the "Oh! Note" stylish black laptop computer, which turns out to be just a white board and a pen when opened.
Married with two teenage sons and a two-year-old daughter, Kajita said he ignores common sense and develops whatever he feels like, but does not try his ideas out on his own children.
"I never talk about my job at home. I don't bring work home ... I'm developing what I want. I can enjoy myself by making funny goods," he said.
But his instincts are not unerring: "I dropped the idea of a high-heeled shoe phone as the heel sticks in your ear," Kajita recalled, and he is aware that his sense of fun must be grounded in the hard-nosed realities of business.
When company president Sato launched a real single-seat electric car modelled on Takara's long-selling toy vehicles last year Kajita said his immediate thought was "the next thing should be a jet."
"I later found it would cost ¥80 billion with no optional devices and not many people have a pilot's licence," he said.
The idea was spiked. The success of Bowlingual speaks for itself in any language, however.
It has sold 300,000 units in the six months to March and could have sold more if supply could have kept pace with demand. The US$120 gadget is set to advance into South Korea in June and the US in August.
Bowlingual has an 8cm microphone attached to a dog collar, and transmits the dog's barks and whines to a palm-sized console held by the animal's master.
The console, equipped with a small display, immediately classifies the sounds into emotional categories such as frustration, menace and joy and shows 200 varieties of matching human phrases.
Time magazine has dubbed the device one of the best inventions of last year, while the US-based science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research awarded Bowlingual its 2002 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for promoting harmony between the species.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS