Abstract

Born out of a research collaboration with Japan’s leading academic institution, the University of Tokyo, here is the second volume of the series that sold more than 530,000 copies in Japan only.

"I wanted to create a picture-book using the favourite characters of children."
 
A lot of bright primary colours are used in most of the picture-books that are supposedly liked by infants. Although babies certainly look at the primary colours, this actually depends on the great visual effect and not on whether they like the colour.
 
Therefore, we decided to hold a popularity vote for the characters, where the infants acted as the judges.
We arranged two characters drawn based on the theme of an apprentice magician who is good at taking many things out of a hat to study, and selected the character that the infants looked the longest at. The results were the complete opposite of the votes of the fathers and mothers!

Author’s Information

Hiraki Kazuo
Hiraki Kazuo is a professor at the Department of General Systems Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, at The University of Tokyo. He specialises in “Baby Study," and manages the Baby Laboratory at The University of Tokyo. This project was started because he wanted to create a picture-book truly loved by babies.

Roron
Illustrator