Manga relates company's quest to outwit cockroaches

Japan's hot and sticky summer weather brings out gokiburi (cockroaches) with a vengeance. So it's excellent timing for Shukan Post and its "engineering manga illustrator" Eiji Miruno to relate the success story of Earth Pharmaceuticals, which set out to build a better roach trap.

Cockroaches habitually clean themselves, so the traditional method for killing them involved spreading substances such as boric acid powder, which would adhere to their feet. They would ingest it and die.

The illustration at this point shows a goki in actual size.

Hey, isn't that getting a bit too realistic, Miruno-san?

"Yes, sorry," the illustrator concedes. "Truth told, I found drawing these repulsive things rough going."

Miruno was equally disgusted to see a female staff member at Earth's research lab squatting to pick up recently expired goki using her bare hands.

"No problem," she said. "They are germ-free." Uh, well if you say so.

It was back in 1973 that Earth hit the jackpot with the Gokiburi Hoihoi, which translates as, "Hey, cockroaches, come on!" In the U.S. it is generically referred to as a roach motel. (Black Flag, whose ad tagline was "Roaches check in, but they don't check out!" registered the U.S. patent in 1976.)

Japan's first version consisted of folding cardboard traps to which a powerful glue, squeezed from the provided tube, is applied to the inner surface. In Version 2, users could just peel off a sheet of paper to expose the sticky interior surface.

In previous types of traps, the goki were trapped in their center, unable to escape. However they remained alive inside, leaving the job of killing them to the householder — which was a turnoff.

Then one day, company president Masatomi Otsuka recalled that when he was young, he used to catch semi (cicadas) by snaring them with poles coated with a substance called torimochi (birdlime) which is extracted from the mochi tree (Ilex integra), which grows over most of Japan.

At the initial stage, before production of the roach motels became fully automated, consumer demand was so high, Earth's workers were requested to take work home with them and perform extra overtime at home. Aspiring job candidates were even tested for their manual dexterity by being asked to fold roach traps.

It was president Otsuka himself who perfected the trap's design, which meant getting to understand goki behavior. For instance roaches, sensing danger, would refrain from crawling directly inside a motel in a straight line. So the entrance ramps were tilted inward and upward at a 30-degree angle, preventing them from seeing where they were headed until they crawled forward and became stuck to the inner surface.

And just how sticky is the substance that renders the goki immobile? Illustrator Miruno was invited to lift a handle glued with the substance to a drum weighing 15 kilograms. It held.

Equally important was the creation of bait that the goki would find irresistible, which in Earth's case is a mixture of four ingredients, including vegetables, meat, shrimp and a fourth "special" attractant whose contents are a carefully guarded secret.

Now fully automated and operating round-the-clock, the assembly line at Earth Pharmaceutical's plant turns out 240,000 traps per day, and has been doing so for the past 30 years.

What's really most amazing, Miruno notes, is the sheer simplicity of a paper product that can be picked up and discarded without the need to soil one's hands. Piling on the corporate PR, he remarks that in itself is "truly revolutionary."

"As a manufacturer of insecticides, what aspect of your work do you find most appealing?" Shoichi Kawamoto, head of Earth's R&D lab, is asked.

"The monozukuri (art of making things) practiced at our company does not come as a result of our knowhow, so much as it does listening to opinions from our customers, and providing them with products that relate closely to their lifestyles and needs," Kawamoto replies. "So for us, there's nothing better than to receive their warm approval for something we made."

Earth's management is not only humble, it's also reverent. The end of every year, the company conducts a Buddhist kuyo ceremony to console the souls of the mosquitoes, cockroaches, house mites and other insect pests killed during test experiments or at the hands of its various sprays, traps and other products.

© Japan Today