io9
Yoshihiro NakaMats, 79, is Japan's most prolific - and bizarre - inventor. He claims to have 3,350 patents (Thomas Edison only had 1,093), and that several of them are for the floppy disk. "Everyone knows about the floppy disk," he says. "But I also invented the fax machine, automatic pachinko, and the taxi meter." While running for mayor of Tokyo last spring, he announced that he possessed three secret tools that would save the world from mass destruction: a device capable of turning North Korean missiles around in mid-air, a love potion more effective than Viagra that would reverse the declining birth rate, and a new water-to-fuel technology that fights global warming. The weird thing is that he could be telling the truth.
Image by the Dr. NakaMats Innovation Institute
NakaMats' repertoire of inventions spans from the useful to the ridiculous. Thousands of pages of neatly hand-written notes and diagrams document the man's mental journey, and prototypes of the gadgets he invented—the magnetic strip, a computer-calculated putter, the aerial duster, jumping shoes, an anti-gravity float-vibrate 3D sonic system—are stacked against the walls of his Invention Library, which he sometimes opens to the public. Every month, he invites 50 students into his Innovation House, where he teaches classes like Exercising the Imagination and The Logic of Invention. He also recently made his male model debut at a Tokyo runway show.
Image by Roger Hutchings
NakaMats attributes his prolific output to a routine that's every bit as eccentric as his inventions. He wakes up at 8am every morning in his Innovation House—an elaborate, three-story, zero-carbon-emissions building in the heart of Tokyo—and eats breakfast. His meals are a constant rotation of 55 foods he has deemed optimal for longevity and creativity based on 35 years of documenting his own dietary habits and correlating them to inventive output. (It was NakaMats' meticulous culinary research that won the Ig Nobel prize for nutrition in 2005.) He then retreats to his home office for most of the workday. He often listens to Beethoven's Symphony No 5—it's the inspirational tune that spawned the floppy disk "Aha!" moment sixty years ago.
Framed photographs of the inventor with everyone from the King of Sweden to the late emperor of Japan line the walls, as well as letters from foreign dignitaries—including one, on White House letterhead, from George Bush, Sr. circa 1988—praising him for his contributions to "technology that is so fundamental to the world' s future prosperity, health, and peace."
At night, NakaMats jots down inventive "flashes" on his Plexiglass notepad while hovering at the bottom of his private indoor pool. He claims that that moment, when he's 0.5 seconds away from death, unveils a part of his brain inaccessible to an oxygen-infused brain. "Hundreds of inventions outside the realm of ordinary thinking have come to me in this environment," he says. NakaMats doesn't fall sleep until the break of dawn. "Midnight to 4AM is the golden time for invention," he tells me. "While everyone is sleeping, I am thinking."
NakaMats didn't become mayor of Tokyo, but he campaigned again in the July Upper House elections by singing a parody version of Do-Re-Mi on street corners filled with youngsters and leaning out of his white election van, holding up his signature peace sign. He managed to rack up over 90,000 votes, landing him in the top 10 (out of 20 candidates). He's going to continue running for office, he says, because he has important technologies that could save Japan from destruction. "I can make North Korean missiles do a 180-degree U-turn and go right back to their point of origin," NakaMats insists. How? "It's not a secret, exactly. But if I tell you, the enemy might find out."
Comments
jumping shoes, glittered lipstick, daily self-inflicted near-death experiences... he's a shoe-in for mayor in my book.
Cool dude.
Water-to-fuel, huh?
I have a soft spot for crackpots. He's right up there with Tesla and and Bell. No Emperor Norton, mind you, but that's a high bar for nay weirdo to reach.
It's great to see NakaMats on here. He's the man.
i'd throw some $$ at his campaign.
Remember, Tesla and Bell both changed the world dramatically. Nakamats could also be a vast world-changer. The neat thing about Nakamats is that Japan is much more likely to actually USE his inventions than the U.S. would from a similar individual.( I'm thinking Tesla again) Because the chaotic nature of Japanese government would be unable to block these inventions even if they threaten certain interests. Plus the Japanese don't have ant native oil companies so the water-to-fuel idea has distinct appeal in Japan.
I bet he's still macking on the hawties... he's duh man!
@spudzill: Yeah, but water-to-fuel, that's a big warning sign. I'm suspicious of that.
"...holding up his signature peace sign."
Is it a signature peace or victory sign? Regardless, interesting article. The idea of near-death inspiration is both cryptic and fascinating :)
Water to fuel? It's called electrolysis. I'm being facetious, of course. Nakamats probably has something insane up his sleeve that doesn't require energy to obtain energy.
@braak: I wonder if Japan stuffs him in the cellar of one of Tokyo's buroughs.
@theintrepidspacemanspiff: Hey there, icon buddy.
Also, dudes, Viagra isn't a love potion in the first place. Still, I did like those floppy disks back in the day.
First he gives us floppy disck then he gives us the pill to cure them.
@HJungle: It's actually "two" for NakamaTSU. Here's a clip.
There are literally dozens of people coming up with plans to replace fossil fuels. And I've seen many of them. They just keep getting put away as the Oil Companies don't want to have anything threaten their profits.
Isn't white the colour of death in Japan?
@spudzill: That's the benefit of doing it in Japan, though; if what was said in comments earlier about Japan not having native oil companies and not having as much regulation that would get in the way is true, developing alternate fuels in Japan should be much easier. If Japan fully developes it, I doubt the oil companies will be able to stop us from using it.
That's true, and the U.S. has in fact been trying to stop the Japanese from developing such alternate sources for years, because if it gets developed there it will come here. The U.S. has toppled governments simply because those governments want to nationalize their oil. Imagine how they must feel about technologies that will supplant oil altogether?
It seems like semen.
it's most likely a peace sign. the japanese are crazy for them and are always flashing them in photos:
[en.wikipedia.org]
He's a complete fraud and a wack job. If he made the same claims while living in America he would have been torn to shreds. But here in Japan there's more tolerance for this type of extreme weirdness. It doesn't matter (here) if he's right, so long as he's interesting.
I wonder what his sex theories and habits are like. All planned out and documented for starters.
I'm skeptical of water-to-fuel being a great idea, even if it works.
Remember 1986 Soviet sci-fi cult comedy Kin-Dza-Dza? The planet Plyuk became a desolate desert because they converted all of the water to fuel and then used most of it up. Then they had to convert the little remaining fuel back into water. Two massive shortages instead of just one!
Well water to fuel wouldn't be a problem of dpletion for several thousand years really what with our Ocean and all. Then we could harvest Io, or the Moons of Saturn.
@blueharv: "Nakamats probably has something insane up his sleeve that doesn't require energy to obtain energy."
Unpossible! Maybe you meant "doesn't require an additional input of energy to obtain energy," in which case, maybe he does, but unlikely. However your idea of energy from nothing violates rule #1 of thermodynamics.
Maybe he just wants to do something like put vibration sensors underneath the roads and sidewalks and harness all the wave energy from footsteps/traffic vibration to power some sort of hydrolysis to get hydrogen gas? Not only could it be done, i'm pretty sure somebody is doing it already.
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