Okay, we’ve very late with this — a quick search reveals people were talking about this back in 2012! But for some reason we’ve only just found out about it and it’s so cool, we wanted to blog it now, two years after everyone else.
Sexual harassment is a serious issue in Japan — especially in the workplace. The problem is so ingrained now some women have given up on finding a solution.
But Etsuko Ichihara and Taiki Watai’s attitudes towards sexual harassment is certainly novel, even if we’re not sure if it makes it better or worse.
They take that most phallic of Japanese root vegetables, the chunky radish (daikon) and turn it into a device for generating sexual groans.
The resulting system is called the Sexual Harassment Interface.
Depending on where you stroke or touch the radishes, the SHI creates different variations of sexual moaning and groaning. They even differentiate a boy and girl radish.
Beyond the WTF response when you first see the contraption in action, our initial thought was: What was it like to record the sounds?
In 2013 the makers then converted the basic radish system into a headset device for a virtual reality sex experience.
The user sees a hot girl whom he can touch and hear her get excited. In reality he’s a “grinning weirdo” (their words) who is stroking a radish.
They’ve been doing this for some time. Here’s a “performance” at Waseda back in 2010. in which they peel the radishes for certain aural effects.
Is this feminism? Girls dressing up in aprons and “maternal” gear to reclaim kitchen tools and food as erotic? Or is it a weird fetish?
Or is it, like so much in Japanese kinky world, beyond any such categorization?
Here are the two designers. They seem like such innocent folk!
And some more futuristic vegetable sex ideas… sadly as yet unrealized.
Porn moan multimedia art with vegetables. Only in Japan!?!
So what’s next? Burdock root sex dolls?
