Jobs

Much of what westerners perceive as Japanese legends actually come from very serious religious thought. Shinto and Buddhist doctrine has long acted like a guiding light for faithful Japanese practitioners. It isn't accurate to associate these beliefs with wholesale supernatural parapsychology.

That being said, the horror stories that Japanese youths exchange each summer prove that Japan does have a separate tradition of less reverent interest in the supernatural. Organizations like the Japan Nengraphy Association, Japanese Society for Parapsychology and the Psi Science Institute of Japan have conducted various types of supernatural research for quite some time.

An individual named W. Asano founded the original Japanese Society for Psychic Science in 1923. Progress in research, however, was slow. The more recent parapsychology organization was founded in 1968 after a researcher from Duke University paid a visit to Japan.

A popular culture phenomenon started in the 1970s when Uri Geller showed up on Japanese television. Portions of Geller's name would later become controversially applied to the names of certain psychic Pokemon. In 1977, a young man named Masuaki Kiyota claimed to have the ability to bend metal with the power of his mind. Some of the experiments he was involved in were shown on television programs broadcast on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

In 1984, he admitted that at least some of the experiments were fraudulent. Kiyota came clean about cases where he had bent certain metal objects by exerting pressure on them with his hands. As one might expect, the fact that he admitted to these frauds have brought his other performances into question.

Naturally, the Japanese electronics industry is equally as famous as any of these spiritualists. Therefore, it might make some sense that Tomy once tried to marry parapsychology and electronic devices. A while back, Tomy developed an electronic fortune telling system called the Neopentagram Tarotstar. It ran on watch batteries and even came with a tiny set of actual tarot cards. Regardless of whether anyone took it seriously, the Tarotstar machine was apparently designed for those that actually liked to collect supposedly magical objects.

Interestingly enough, there was actually a more toyish version for younger players. The Tomy Tuxedo Sam Tarotstar featured a popular character from Sanrio's Hello Kitty franchise. While Tuxedo Sam isn't nearly as famous as the other characters from that universe, he was prominently featured on the device. As one might figure with a toy like this, it was offered in two different colors.