japan

The Invention of Dr. NakaMats (Director: Kaspar Astrup Schröder): A sin­gu­larly unset­tling exper­i­ence, watching The Invention of Dr. NakaMats is like being dropped down a rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland and won­dering if what you’re seeing with your eyes is real or ima­gined. Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu, or Dr. NakaMats as he calls him­self, is a Japanese inventor who claims to hold more than 3,000 pat­ents on everything from the floppy disk to karaoke. Like a cross between Willy Wonka and the Reverend Moon, he is cha­ris­matic and charming one minute, and creepily strange the next. The film fol­lows him in the days before his 80th birthday in 2008, pre­paring for a party where he will announce his latest invention.

Dr. NakaMats is tire­less at everything (and claims to sleep no more than 4 hours a night), but most of all he’s a tire­less self-promoter. He can also be incred­ibly vain. Always nat­tily dressed, he receives vis­itors in his office like sup­plic­ants, dis­pensing advice to all. I felt par­tic­u­larly sorry for the hotel employee who had to break the news that they couldn’t per­man­ently rename one of their ban­quet rooms the NakaMats Room on the occa­sion of his birthday party being held there.

The party itself is a hit, with a huge roomful of his admirers enjoying them­selves immensely. Beforehand, Dr. NakaMats intro­duces the assembled press to his new inven­tion, the B-Bust, a revolu­tionary kind of brassiere. But instead of showing them the product, he simply presents a busty woman wearing a dress. When asked if they can see the bra, he gives them a con­fusing non-answer and retreats to his birthday gathering.

Throughout the film’s brisk sub-60 minute run­ning time, the good doctor shows off more of his inven­tions, including engines that run on water and heat, his spe­cially for­mu­lated Brain Drink, and a mys­ter­ious libido-enhancing elixir for women called Love Jet. About Love Jet, he claims. “I’ve tested more than 10,000 women. Of course, I’m not doing the sex. I’m checking meters.” None of the inven­tions are examined in great detail, and I began to get the dis­tinct impres­sion that there is some­thing of the con man about Dr. NakaMats. While the audi­ence laughed (including me), there is def­in­itely some­thing very weird going on here.

Before I’d seen the film, I’d seen Dr. NakaMats him­self at sev­eral fest­ival events, posing for pic­tures and handing out his “lucky busi­ness card” to any and all who asked. What I began to notice more and more was the sullen pres­ence of his silent and long­suf­fering wife. Whether he’s a genius, a madman or a char­latan, it’s clear that an hour in his pres­ence is amusing, but a life­time might be some­thing else entirely.

• Official site of Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu
• Official site of the film

Here is the Q&A with pro­ducer Mette Heide and Dr. NakaMats him­self from after the screening, con­ducted by Hot Docs Programming Manager Karina Rotenstein:

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Duration: 10:55

(8/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs10, eccentrics, genius, japan

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