Originally Posted by
Spoonrobot
It's obviously in Japanese but I can't help but wonder if there was an English language equivalent?
Maybe it serves a specifically Japanese need. I've been told that the Japanes have a different sense of aesthetics, so they might need a few ground rules when designing for foreign markets or designign European inventions.
Originally Posted by
philbob57
Consider the aesthetic demands on the rider, too. According to this diagram, the rider needs to be proportioned so that the combo of torso, arms, and riding position compute out to long reach relative to the legs; that is, the the legs have to be pretty short for the rider's reach.
According to Vitrivius the human body was the basis of aesthetic proportioning. So maybe that's why at least some bikes look good. But maybe Japanese are proportioned differently. There are quite a lot of Chinese students cycling where I live, and a lot of the females ride kids bikes instead of small ladies bikes. The explanation given is that they aren't just short, but have different proportions too. Maybe the Japanese and the Chinese proportions are more alike than European proportions?.