According to Wikipedia:
Chindōgu (珍道具?) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions, would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever. Thus, Chindōgu are sometimes described as ‘unuseless’ – that is, they cannot be regarded as ‘useless’ in an absolute sense, since they do actually solve a problem; however, in practical terms, they cannot positively be called ‘useful’.
This is the same spirit that inspires me to create my Friday comics, Products that Never Made It. While mine are entirely fictional, however, there are inventors out there taking their unuseless ideas and making fully “functional” prototypes. Just check out these creations of Chindōgu master Kenji Kawakami.
Those shoe umbrellas are awesome!
