Modern Japan has many faces. There’s the scowl of the businessman, working 15-hour days and looking to avoid karoshi, or “death by overworking.” The reason this word exists is the phenomenon is not uncommon in Japanese corporate culture. Those who work 100 hours or more per week are most at risk.

One of the most frequently heard words in daily Japanese life is gambatte, which means “Do your best!”. You hear it every day. This value, borne out of ancient samurai culture, is reflected in the serious look on a boss’s face, pushing workers on, and is one of the things that drives Japanese designers and engineers to create products we admire, for example, Seiko watches. A counterbalance to this deadly seriousness is a high value placed in Japan on cute and quirky things. Things that bring a smile. Japanese television programs are overwhelmingly irreverent and silly. Nothing relieves stress better than a good laugh.

A 90-year-old neighbor recently gave me a box of books and magazines from Japan published in the 1960s and ’70s. They are souvenirs from trips to Asia more than three decades ago. I discovered the advertisement for the Sportsmatic 5 in a JAL (Japan Air Lines) brochure from the mid-’60s.

The ad shows two sides of Japan at once, with the high-quality Sportsmatic displayed on a comical egg. Then there’s the bad pun about the watch being “egg-citing.” The reason the watch and egg are in a boat is the advertisement was aimed at convincing American tourists to take a new Seiko back with them as a souvenir.

It brought to mind a big craze from the mid-1990s, a small egg-shaped computer called Tamagotchi. The toy, popular with children and adults, displays the Japanese passion for technology combined with a love of insufferable cuteness. The word Tamagotchi is very difficult for Westerners to pronounce correctly because of the tchi sound, and that’s the sound that makes it sound cute to Japanese people. The word is a combination of the Japanese word tamago, meaning egg, and the English word watch.

Another example of how Japanese like to blend technology with silliness is a fad from last summer (2006). The i-Duck, sold by Japanese eVendor SolidAlliance, is a USB flash drive shaped like a yellow rubber duck. At the height of popularity, the i-Duck was very difficult to find and sold for prices two to three times the cost of conventional flash drives with identical storage capacities

One more fad from last year is flash drives shaped like Japanese food. There are sushi flash drives, and tempura ones, as well as other varieties. The complete set of sushi drives goes for around $650 U.S.

Back to the “Say-ko” advertisement from the mid-’60s, I’ll post the entire ad below. You may enjoy reading the text. I plan on posting more Seiko ads from the ’60s and ’70s in the near future, from Japanese publications targeted at American tourists. As the ad says, “gifts, for yourself.”

Hope this brings a smile to your face.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Seiko. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.