Chindōgu (珍道具) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions, would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever. Thus, Chindōgu are sometimes described as ‘unuseless’ – that is, they cannot be regarded as ‘useless’ in an absolute sense, since they do actually solve a problem; however, in practical terms, they cannot positively be called ‘useful’.

Literally translated, ‘Chindōgu’ means unusual (珍 chin) tool (道具 dōgu). The term was coined by Kenji Kawakami, a Japanese inventor and writer who first made the idea prominent in a book translated into English, in the mid-nineties, as 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions: The Art of Chindōgu. The popular success of this book prompted a follow-up, 99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions, which was published a few years later. Together, the books have sold nearly a quarter of a million copies in Japan alone, and have been translated into most of the major world languages.

Wikipedia