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.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
RSS