Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

Many Japanese children feel stress when studying KANJI. They need to memorize at least 1026 characters of kanji in elementary school to live in Japan. We want to reduce their stress and help them study. We created a special new game for studying kanji. Our game can turn the boring time of studying KANJI at school into a fun time and motivate each child to study kanji more.

Background

The “Japan Kanji Aptitude Test” is a kanji test which individuals pay to apply for. We, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, wanted to increase the number of examinees, especially for elementary school students. The Japanese language consists of three kinds of scripts, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanni. Hiragana and Katakana are simple, but Kanji is very complicated. To learn Kanji, you must memorize the meaning, character, and pronunciation of each kanji, so many children hate studying kanji. We created a special game to make our target children love studying kanji. Our game turns the boring time of studying KANJI at school into a fun time.

Describe the creative idea

We created a special game “Escape from the mysterious kanji cave”. It is a teaching material that allows children to study kanji by playing a game. By using this teaching material at elementary school, the boring class of studying kanji can turn into a fun event with friends. All the contents of the game are kanji-based questions. However, it cannot be solved without some inspiration as well as knowledge of kanji. Therefore, many children can demonstrate their individuality and specialties and talking about kanji with their friends is induced.

Describe the strategy

After they children have experienced playing this game it has become easier for them to talk about kanji with their friends and thus the overall interest in kanji among their peers increases.

Describe the execution

【Timeline】 1.Children watch a story video. As “cave explorers” the game begins. 2. In teams of 4 or 5 they compete to finish the game the fastest. 3. At the end, they will watch a video reviewing the correct answers. 【Implementation】 Japanese elementary schools. 【Scale】 About 3,000 elementary school children participated from over 30 schools.

Describe the outcome

The game quickly became a hot topic in the education industry. Despite being announced only on our homepage, we received applications from over 30 schools in the first month of its release. 98% of children who experienced the game answered that they wanted to study kanji more than before. Furthermore, a follow-up survey showed that elementary schools that played this game had a greater number of applicants for the “Japan Kanji Aptitude Test” than elementary schools that did not participate in this game.