WTHIGO #4
I try to be understanding. Really, I do. I try not be judgmental or to jump to ridiculous, even offensive conclusions. Heck, I've even decided to ramp up my cultural sensitivity by going into this project with the assumption that there's some non-twisted logic behind Japanese cultural ephemera. I have to remind myself that Western culture is full of its own post-industrial absurdities.
Take for instance our marketing tools, which sometimes veer into downright surreal territory. Since 1963, corporate shills have used the following things to sell cheap hamburgers to the American public: A clown who hallucinates a day-glo world filled with friends and adversaries who all have eating disorders, a megalomaniac with a history of home invasion, a shameless rip-off of Pippi Longstocking, and yet another, somehow creepier clown who refuses to go east of the Rocky Mountains.
So, is our culture really so much saner than the ball-trampling, squid-ink-eating, giant-robot-fetishizing Japanese? I can't say for certain, but it seems we're at least less oblivious.
What The Hell Is Going On
Because the Boyfriend's Arm and Girlfriend's Lap pillows just aren't enough for the growing disembodied anatomy furniture market, the people at Takata have deemed it necessary to provide the Japanese public with the Lover's Oversized Yet Somehow Still Disconcertingly Muscular Butt travel pillow. No longer will the daily commutes of Japan's large, dedicated work force have to wait until they get home to enjoy their inexplicable fetish for the human posterior. Just imagine a bullet train going from Tachikawa to Shinjuku, filled end-to-end with professionals of every age and gender, their faces buried in the crevices of fluffy gluteal simulants.
Although, this whole thing might bite the manufacturer in the... it might end up knocking Takata on its... it might cause some unwanted public concern if the Butt Pillow becomes popular with juveniles. While the laws of Japan, both federal and by prefecture, are fairly clear concerning the purchase of overtly pornographic material by minors, there's nothing on the books so far about the procuration of novelty prosthetics. It's one creepy, bizarre thing if a grown person wants to be seen in public with a giant pillow shaped like the universal naughty part, but kids could get the wrong idea.
Another potential problem is how this might effect Japan's massive automatic vending industry. I mean, the machine for the Butt Pillow would theoretically be prohibitively large. On top of that, the actual vending process has a crushing and/or smothering risk. Japanese industry has overcome bigger problems, to be sure, but this issue is nothing to sniff at... ew, sorry.
What's Actually Happening
OK, so Takata is a manufacturer of specialty car products and they've developed a new concept for airbags that significantly reduces the likelihood of facial injury upon deployment, most specifically the prospect of a broken nose. This one very unfortunately-designed safety feature will probably save countless lives all over the world, not counting the people who can't live with the embarrassment of being seen in public motorboating a comically large ass because they're bad drivers.
How Accurate I Was: 7/10- I'm not just imagining things, right? That DOES look like a gigantic, inflatable butt, doesn't it? I mean, did they have to make it flesh-colored? Couldn't it have been pure white, or straight black, or some silly purple or green color that doesn't appear in nature?
Don't you judge me.
