Background

Global warming has now become a climate crisis. The impact is no longer just rising temperatures, since the climate crisis is affecting many aspects of our daily lives. Japan has been heavily affected by natural disasters, but the Japanese people’s interest and concern toward climate crisis has remained quite low. Therefore, there was a need to have more Japanese people face the climate crisis and realize that it is something that affects them.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

In order to reflect the impact of the climate crisis happening on a world-wide basis to the hometowns of the Japanese, “47 Apocalyptic Scenes” were depicted of all the 47 prefectures of Japan, showing unwanted climate crises that may occur in the future. When the name of the prefecture is clicked on the special website, illustrations that show an image of an unwanted future resulting from climate crisis appears with an explanation. The visitors to the site are also able to see what they can do to prevent this from happening. For instance, for Tokyo, the illustration shows Sky Tree flooded in water from the powered-up typhoon. And for Kyoto, the scene shows a heat-struck Maiko (young Geisha girl). The scenes showed illustrations of the climate crisis that will affect the landmarks and culture of the local areas of Japan.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

By collaborating with the Ministry of the Environment and many other special organizations to acquire weather forecast data, scenes of actual climate crisis that could happen around the target were depicted. In order to make this an effective step for Japanese people who have low concern toward environmental issues to think about climate crisis, illustrations were used, even though the topic was quite serious, so that the visuals are easier for the Japanese to take in. The special website also functioned as a portal site for climate crisis information. By suggesting concrete actions that can be taken now to prepare for a better future, the site was designed to connect the awareness of each individual to action.

List the results (20% of vote)

One month after launch, impressions were 88 million, with 77 million reached. As a campaign that dealt with a global issue, successfully bringing it home to the regions of Japanese, the Ministry of the Environment and many global humanitarian organizations as well as climate crisis-related organizations supported this campaign. Mascots of the regional governments and celebrities also supported the campaign, sharing the illustrations of the apocalyptic scenes for their prefectures on their SNS accounts and helped spread the message. By seeing what may happen to their own hometowns, many people realized that the climate crisis is real, resulting in many comments on SNS to take action, leading to behavior change.