Ah, the things you find when you’re tidying up your hard disk. Back in 2002 I took the mickey out of various daft Web things for The Friday Thing, and while most of the sites I wrote about are long gone, some still survive – including this excellent cure for depression:
Web Celeb: Hiroyuki Nishigaki
Unlike most of our Web Celebs, Nishigaki’s Web site isnÃt the source of our mirth: we prefer the page on Amazon.com where you can buy his book. And no wonder: Nishigaki’s book promises to beat depression through the medium of anus constriction.No, we’re not making this up. The book – How to Beat Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? – exists, and it’s currently sitting at number 33,709 in Amazon’s sales chart.
Rather than paraphrase Nishigaki’s description of his tome, we’ll let the author speak for himself. “I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth,” he writes. “You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known a 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has a good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make #### three times in succession without drawing out.”
Yes, we’re wondering what #### means too. We think it might be something to do with sex. “He also can have burned a strong, beautiful fire within his abdomen,” writes Nishigaki. “It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention, which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration.”
Amazingly, people have shelled out hard-earned cash on Nishigaki’s epic – and not all of them are pleased with their purchase. David Emory is far from happy. “I am afraid I must chime in and say that I didn’t find this book very helpful,” he writes. “It was recommended by my doctor, whom I now regard as somewhat of a quack. One of the more ludicrous claims the books makes is that constricting one’s anus _more_ than the 100 times per day recommended is not suggested and can lead to health problems. I can say with absolute assurance (pardon the pun… continuing) that constricting the anal muscles MANY more times than simply one hundred times daily has had no adverse effect on me whatsoever. In fact, I’m constricting it right now as I write this, and I’ve been doing it all day, almost non-stop. Certainly totalling upwards of 1000 times.”
Most readers’ comments are positive, though. “I just recieved this book not a week ago, and man! are my buns feeling great,” writes Will. “My life has been given a good jumpstart. I feel like the good old captian [sic] Buns O’ Steel himself!”
Nishigaki explains: “If you don’t know concentration, which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life looks like hell.” Or as reader Joshua Beall puts it, “You probably have to be a little warped to buy this book.”