Conclusion

During and after the Meiji era, numerous items were added to the e sugoroku catalogue on a wide variety of subject matter, including westernization, education, transportation, the Imperial Diet, and warfare. For example, sugoroku on education were published after the establishment of a national education system was announced in 1872, as were sugoroku featuring Diet members [Constitutional Government Documents Collection 1238]. Also, advances in printing technology resulted in a transition from wood printing to the more resilient letterpress printing, which facilitated the mass production of sugoroku.
Developments during the Meiji era also afforded people greater upward social mobility through individual effort, and sugoroku depicting such social mobility allowed the player to move from merely being rich to studying abroad and being named a university president or a government minister. Educational sugoroku included not just academic knowledge but also didactic elements as seen in the Zen aku dochu kotobuki sugoroku introduced in the section of this exhibition entitled “1st Move: Visiting Famous Places.” During the late Meiji era, as more and more magazines targeting children were published, sugoroku became popular as freebies. These ranged from didactic, moralistic games to fantastic ones featuring trips overseas and even to outer space. Young readers not only learned from these games but dreamed of actually visiting such remote places.
During the second half of the 20th century, the growing popularity of television and then computer games as leisure activities led to a drastic decrease in the popularity of board games like sugoroku. Yet even though you are far less likely nowadays to see sugoroku in toy stores, they still exist as freebies attached to children’s magazines.

References

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