Otaku Smooch: A Kissing Poster for Japan’s Lonely Hearts

When you can’t get close to your heartthrob, the next best thing is usually to settle for an accessory – say, a poster – that you can stare at longingly with no one telling you to stop. But for some Japanese culture fans, the poster pleasures have limits when they want to get physical.

That’s when one inventive Tokyo college student decided to be a doer: For his graduation project, he developed a digital poster that responds when users lean in for a smooch.

“I really love those posters,” said Keidai Ogawa, a recent graduate of Keio University in Tokyo, in an interview with JRT on Thursday. A self-professed “otaku,” a sub-culture of geeks in Japan who pride themselves on their uber niche interests, Mr. Ogawa has five motionless posters of his favorite anime idols in his bedroom. “But they’re very big and the picture is just there. It seemed like a waste to me, so I wondered if there was a way to get them to move and interact with me that could also be enjoyable for idol fans.”

After mining online anime fan sites and talking with friends, he suspected he wasn’t the only enthusiast who would like his posters to kiss back.

“Most people don’t understand it, but it’s pretty common for otaku to look up at their posters and think ‘I’d like to kiss it,’” said the 22-year-old.

The technology is called “pochuter” - a word that sandwiches the Japanese word for kiss “chu” in the middle of “poster” - and simpler to dissect than the psychology driving the urge to kiss a display screen. The key is an ultrasound sensor placed overhead which detects how far the kisser’s head is from the screen. Based on that distance the “poster” subject leans in for the kiss accordingly. After the moment passes the image blushes coyly.

Mr. Ogawa’s wheels are still spinning: he hopes to keep tinkering with the technology to release it as an app for Apple Inc.’s iPads and Google Inc.’s Android operating system. More elements that will enhance the sensory experience are being brainstormed. Some ideas include layering the screen where the subject’s lips are with a lemon-scented silicon film, or make it so the user can catch a whiff of the “poster’s” shampoo as he leans in, and then have the “poster” whisper sweet nothings. He foresees celebrities being able to use this as an application or digital signage. The challenge for Mr. Ogawa — who this week was among the thousands of Japanese college graduates to join the working masses — will be finding time to work on his projects. He has just become a salaryman, joining what he described as a “big company.”

Mr. Ogawa and his classmates debuted the “kissing poster” at a Keio University design exhibition in Tokyo at the end of March. Since then, the product has received a mix of reviews in both Japan and overseas. Some derided it as the latest symptom of a weird and lonely culture cropping up here. Threads on Japanese online message forums discussed a local media report noting that overseas chatter used the description “forever alone.”

But Mr. Ogawa doesn’t mind. “Generally speaking, some people might think this is weird. And some people have said this is a bad thing, but others have also said they liked it. I don’t mind either way,” he says.