Ninja Vending Machine
Fearing Crime, Japanese Wear the Hiding Place
New York Times, Oct. 19, 2007
TOKYO— …Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime. Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine…more…
Back in 2005, I reported on this as, The ultimate Japanese disguise ‘Instantaneous Vending-Machine Skirt’. 
Now, more than two years later, it’s kind of disingenuous for the New York Times to report that this very tongue-in-cheek anti-crime device was invented by an “experimental fashion designer.” Actually, the inventor is an artist who has won an art show award for this as her student artwork long ago in 2001.
In other words, this vending machine disguise was “invented” more than seven years ago—long before Japan’s so-called “crime boom.” The artist, Aya Tsukioka, is doing a great PR job recycling her 15 minutes of fame but….. She-e-e-it, it was not designed as an anti-crime device.
Buried deep in the New York Times story is the restofthestory: This is a chindogu—what is called in translation an “unuseless” invention as seen in the Amazon book on the right—It’s a Japanese version of a Rube Goldberg device.
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October 21st, 2007 at 1:01 am
Hey Taro!
WIRED magazine also seems to have been sucked in by this art school scam, ha, ha.
Refer to today’s Wired.com
October 21st, 2007 at 1:42 am
I wonder happens if some guy tries to stick something in the vending machine disguised Ms. Tsukioka’s coin slot or fiddles with her coin return?
October 21st, 2007 at 11:15 am
“Oh, come on. Who among us hasn’t fantasized about raping a vending machine?“
October 21st, 2007 at 12:02 pm
More Japanese “unuseless” inventions see these Chindogu pix and check out this Chindogu interactive Flash movie (with sound).
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I thought she was trying to avoid crime, but there she is cosplaying as a machine – which is just asking for her knobs to be twiddled, her flap lifted and her goods grabbed. However, it is Halloween next week, so maybe there is a market for the outfit.
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Perhaps only a “limited market”…Somewhere on the artist’s site the price is listed at 80,000yen, nearly $800 USD.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 pm
If you checked the Internet over the weekend, you may have caught one of the dozen or so blogs that linked to a WACKY IMAGE OF A PERSON DRESSED AS A COCA-COLA VENDING MACHINE, from a piece last week in the New York Times. The article stated with a straight face that fear of being assaulted while walking down the street was causing Japanese females to disguise themselves as vending machines to feel safe, which immediately compelled me to check my calendar to see that I hadn’t somehow time-slipped to April 1st. For the record, the Times reporter got this one wrong, taking a parody creation intended as social commentary for a product people would actually use….
….those weird Japanese inventions you may have seen, like tiny umbrellas for your shoes or a small electric fan you attach to your chopsticks to cool your noodles as you eat them? They’re a long-running gag called “chindougu,” or “useless Japanese inventions” and they don’t exist, although we always get a few requests for them at J-List…continued at J-List side blog of October 23, 2007.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Here’s a good write-up.