Fortean Slips: The Bra of Nostradamus

The Bra of Nostradamus

by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com

With the year 2000 fast approaching, panic-stricken masses are scrambling to stock up on the supplies and equipment that might help them survive whatever apocalypse may be close at hand. Gloom and doom means booming business for canned food, bottled water, batteries, candles, ammunition... and don't forget the sexy underwear.

Yes, ladies, there is now special lingerie custom-designed for the End Times. Sure, people are gonna need some way to pass the time when all the lights are out, but the modern woman who wants to be truly prepared for the catastrophe ahead will have to be wearing more than just frilly lace and silk under her survival gear. She'll want the stylish new foundation garment that alerts her of the impending end of the world while it gently lifts and separates. The time has come for the Armageddon Bra.

This apocalyptic item of intimate apparel is an invention of the Japanese, whose doomsday fears have little to do with the Book of Revelation or the Y2K problem. Thousands in Japan are convinced that civilization will be wiped out long before the dreaded four-digit year rollover, all because of a Nostradamus prophecy which supposedly foretells of a major cataclysm that will kill one third of the Earth's population in July 1999. It must take some of the pressure off all the computer programmers over there, at least.

Nostradamus has been immensely popular in Japan since the 1970s, especially during times of national panic and crisis. Under the current economic turmoil that has plunged the country into a deep recession, the 16th century seer from Provence has become an outright superstar. Kokugakuin University recently conducted a poll which found that 20 percent of the Japanese populace claims to harbor some belief in the Nostradamus prophecies.

Japan's bookstores have devoted shelf space to "Nostradamus corners," with about 200 different titles on the topic selling like there's no tomorrow. One ten-volume set has sold six million copies. Most of the books insist that Nostradamus' predictions are indisputably reliable and warn readers that the end is indeed nigh. The prophecy that really has the Japanese rattled comes from a passage that Old Nosty jotted down in 1558, which can be found in Century 10, quatrain 72 of his writings:

L'an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois
Du ciel viendra grand Roy deffraieur
Resusciter le grand Roy d'Angolmois.
Avant apres Mars regner par bon heur.

Of course, the infamous charm of those quatrains is that you can translate them a zillion different ways, but Nostradamus expert (and debunker) James Randi has rendered the passage into English as follows:

The year 1999 seven months
From the sky will come a great King of Terror
To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols.
Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.

Nostradamus fans in Japan and elsewhere are particularly excited about this quatrain because it's one of the few prophecies in which the seer specified an exact calendar date. That means you can't easily slide it around to fit any suitable event between the French Revolution and the Challenger explosion. And not only is this one dated, it also boasts a juicy, thrill-packed prediction of great terror coming from the sky! People can debate plenty on what the heck those non sequiturs about Mars and King of the Mongols are supposed to mean, but it seems pretty clear that Monsieur Nostredame was saying something big and bad would be hitting the fan in July of 1999.

Some people think a comet will collide with the Earth and splatter us into cosmic Jell-o, Deep Impact style. Others believe the "great King of Terror" Nostradamus referred to is nuclear weapons, which will rain from the sky in an unimaginably devastating conflict. Another frightening theory has it that the Cassini space probe will accidentally crash when it slingshots around the Earth on its way to Saturn. The danger here is that Cassini is powered by 72 pounds of plutonium, which could cause lethal worldwide fallout if it exploded in the Earth's atmosphere. Jet Propulsion Laboratories has issued assurances that the probability of such a dire mishap is minute, but Nostradamaphiles aren't taking their word for it. And it doesn't matter that Cassini won't reach its closest approach to Earth until August. That's close enough to prophecy fulfillment to satisfy some people.

Of all the Nostradamus believers around the globe, it seems the Japanese are the uncontested world leaders in eating this stuff up. Apocalypse fever has taken hold in the land of the rising sun, where people are worrying that the sun might quit rising pretty soon. A popular TV variety show called Denpa Shonen has been counting down to the July apocalypse with two comedians who are preparing a underground shelter. Despite the program's satirical slant, the show has been credited with boosting the sales of Nostradamus books and home survival shelters. It was only a matter of time before other consumer goods industries ventured into what has become one of the few growth sectors in the Japanese economy.

Enter the Armageddon Bra.

Triumph International Japan, the country's second-largest lingerie firm, unveiled the new product at a recent Tokyo fashion show. The Armageddon Bra has a sensor mounted atop one shoulder strap and a "control box" fastened to the front, which ostensibly will warn the wearer of dangerous objects falling from the sky. Triumph recommends that the bra should be worn without any outer clothing that might interfere with the functioning of its sensors. Fortunately, the bra isn't so skimpy that a woman wearing it in public would look indecent, although she would look kinda goofy. Constructed from a requisite futuristic silvery fabric with a row of colored lights across the bustline, the civil-preparedness garment looks less like lingerie than a costume Carol Burnett might have worn in a cheesy skit about outer space.

Aesthetic merits aside, Triumph announced that this marks the dawn of "a new generation of bras designed for a world where catastrophes can strike at any moment." All right, now, let's get real. They can't really be serious about this... can they?

The Japanese sense of humor can be an inscrutable puzzle to us Westerners, and their pop culture wackiness is wonderfully unfettered by logic and reason. But it may shed some insight into the meaning behind the Armageddon Bra to consider that Triumph International Japan has a history of producing koo-koo gimmick lingerie. In 1991, Triumph observed the 200th anniversary of Mozart's birth by marketing a bra with an electronic music chip that bleeped a passage from the composer's symphonies. Triumph later made headlines with a line of bras and panties made out of recycled plastic bottles, decorated with leafy green patterns to illustrate their eco-friendly image. The company is also a leading producer of "borderless" lingerie, which is designed to be socially acceptable as outerwear as well as underwear, just as the Armageddon Bra itself is.

Furthermore, lest the paranoia-addled gentleman should feel overlooked, another Japanese company previously marketed an electronic alarm device that would warn a man when his fly was undone, "thus preventing the occurrence of embarrassment, injury, loss or damage." For the heavily image-conscious Japanese, it's not that drastic a leap from being warned that your zipper's down to being warned that nuclear missiles are on their way. It's all starting to make a little more sense now, isn't it?

I guess we can tentatively conclude that the bra of Nostradamus is just the latest in a series of trendy, tongue-in-cheek underwear that doesn't hold a vast amount of sociological significance apart from being silly. Despite the hardcore legion of Japanese prophecy-believers, most of the country still regards the Nostradamus mania as either nonsense or amusing entertainment. In this light, the Armageddon Bra is harmless, wacky fun that will give its buyers fond memories to laugh at with their grandchildren someday. Well... hopefully, anyway. You know... assuming Nostradumbass was wrong and stuff.

Then again, maybe a bra equipped with a doomsday warning device isn't entirely ludicrous. After all, if you could be notified just before the world was about to end, there wouldn't be much of anything sensible you could do, except for grabbing an agreeable partner and taking off your underwear as quickly as possible.

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