Looking at what’s going on in Japan can give you a great idea of the gizmos that will be showing up in America. But not everything that’s big in Japan will make a splash in the United States.
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Take toilet seats, for example.
Department stores offer dozens of computerized toilet seats that will warm themselves up, produce jets of water in various directions on command, apply a bit of deodorizer, even play a soothing tune. All this for just $2,500.
This is one of those cultural things that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to most Americans, but is really important to many Japanese. For instance, some Japanese repeatedly flush while using the toilet to cover up the other sounds. Toilet seats are now available that will emit a digitized version of the noise a flushing toilet makes, which spares embarrassment and doesn’t waste water.
Other gizmos with a more universal appeal were never popular in the United States, despite hitting it big in Japan. The MiniDisc, introduced by Sony Corp. about five years ago, offered a way for people to make CD-quality recordings–instead of those hissy cassette tapes–years before recordable CD machines became affordable.
An enormous number of people in Japan carry MD players and recorders, and buy prerecorded MiniDiscs, but the format never caught on in the United States, apparently because many Americans had just completed shifting their audio rigs in home and auto to CD and were reluctant to invest in another format.
The Japanese, however, are extremely susceptible to fads.
“We’re taught as young children that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down,” said Chiaki Kato, a staff writer with Toyo Keizai, a leading Japanese business weekly. This widespread desire for conformity ensures that, once a critical mass of Japanese adopt a new fad, much of the rest of the nation will follow in a sudden stampede. Will the MD format ever succeed in America? Probably not, now that recordable CDs are becoming commonplace and other digital formats, like MP3, are taking off; MP3 isn’t especially big in Japan because the Internet isn’t especially big there yet.
Japanese manufacturers are always trying to make stuff smaller, in part because space comes at a premium in the island nation, which has a population of 120 million. It’s also one reason for the Japanese interest in pocket gizmos, which Americans value more because of their portability.
Thus, there are nearly a dozen DVD players available in Japan that are about the size of a Walkman. But we’re not talking about those nifty DVD and flat panel display gadgets that are great when you’re traveling; it’s just a very tiny DVD player designed to plug into a TV set. It makes a lot of sense in a tiny Tokyo apartment, but has only limited appeal in the United States.
And some items become fads in Japan because of specific changes in policy. Lots of people decided a wiretap detector isn’t such a bad idea now that Japanese law enforcement officials have the legal right to eavesdrop on communications under certain circumstances. Such items have been available in the United States for years, but have never been especially popular. Small Japanese shops are loaded with them, alongside charms and glowing antennae for people who feel the need to customize their cell phones.