Politics is people’s behavior to choose his/her own goal for the future. People cannot insist that I am right with absolute certainty when they discuss the future. On the other hand, everybody can say that I am right since nobody is sure about the happenings in the future. At the same time, people strongly insist his/her opinions in politics because the political decisions regulate his/her own future as decisions of society as a whole. Consequently, all the people try to defend his opinion with high pride in politics. In politics, we struggle vigorously with other citizens to seek for our own future goals in real society.

While the political activities are the behaviors to choose and seek for the future goals of his/her own among multiple possible goals, players in ordinary games are not given the opportunities to choose and build their own goals for the future. The ordinary games in business, education etc. are not adequate in analyzing and experiencing real politics because these ordinary games set the only one ultimate goal in the games from the beginning of play. They consolidate an ultimate goal in the games at the starting-point, and simply ask the players to choose the way and means of attaining the goal.

The author tries to find out the new type of games which are more flexible and which allow the players to change the ultimate goals as well as the existing value-systems in the games while they enjoy the plays of the games. In this Preface, the author examines the concepts of politics, the input-output models of political decision-making, the issue of relevancy of games to the real politics, and two types of political thoughts (ideology vs utopia), to seek for and establish the new type of simulation & gaming.

Research on “ENREN”, an unfortunately vanished Japanese term meaning a gaming simulation, was pioneered in June-November 1941 in Japan. A national graduate school of gaming was established under the administration of a civilian Prime Minister on September 30, 1940. However, the actual name of the school was the Total War Research Institute which seemed to be supposedly identical to be one of subordinate agencies of the US military services at that time. In 1950s, the Rand Corporation probably first reported this gaming as a war game which they focused intensively with mathematical effort. Until the school closed on March 31, 1945 due to aggravation of the war situation, over 100 graduates, almost all who were not military people but civilians, had graduated from the school. This paper examines extensively the first social systems gaming developed by the school in order to show that the first Japanese gaming simulation was not a war game, but a policy exercise, more precisely a policy formation exercise involving 29 civilians, who were some professors from colleges and many junior executives from the public and private sectors, as well as only four military officers.

In liberalized energy markets, the long-term benefit of whole society, i.e. the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables, conflicts with the short-term profit of each company because the price competition dampen the investments in new technologies. This study investigates how the subjective realities of energy companies affect the progress in the energy transition under the dilemma between the long-term investments and short-term competitions. For the purpose, the multiplayer game simulating a competitive energy market is designed, and the gameplay and questionnaire by participants are performed. The analytical results show that there are two types of game in which the energy transition does not progress. In the first type of game, the competitive world view is shared and the intense price competitions actually occur. In the second type of game, a free rider monopolizes the market in which the cooperative world view is shared. These results suggest that not only the policies to favor new technologies to prevent free ride but also the policies to prevent the escalation of price competition is required to progress the energy transition.

This study applied the critical mass model to investigate the effects of individual attitudes toward a certain behavior on the ratio of its acceptance in a group or society. Individual attitudes were expressed with a “critical number” representing the difficulty of acceptance. Each of the individuals changed their behavior when the percentage of the other individuals who accepted the behavior was equal to or larger than the critical number. Individuals whose critical numbers were 0 accepted the behavior even if no other individuals accepted it. Those with critical numbers of above 100 did not accept even if all the others accepted the behavior. Most datasets were created by changing each individual’s critical number and the distribution of the critical numbers (uniform or normal distribution). This computer simulation involved two groups: global and local. The global knew behaviors of all involved, while the local only knew about the behaviors of neighbors. This study analyzed the differences between global and local conditions using cellular automata simulation. The results showed that the “local” condition tended to decrease behavior change in a society. In addition, this trend was stronger in the following settings: A) the ratio of individuals whose critical number was 0 was low or B) that of individuals whose critical number was above 100 was low. However, the local condition could increase the behavior change in the case of a normal distribution

This study intended to develop a game that would serve as a learning tool to raise awareness regarding the residential environment and encourage energy saving. Further, the investigation was also aimed at ascertaining the game’s learning impact. A board game called Sugoroku was developed by using gaming simulation on the basis of social psychology methodologies. The game was devised as a method of problem solving for the purpose of enhancing awareness and effecting behavior change and was organized in thematic episodes that encompassed five stages: problem recognition, housing renovation, problem solving, behavior change related to energy saving, and understanding of the global environment. Learners grasped the instruction content by reading the episodes and by distinguishing game scores. The investigation determined the learning impact of the game on 555 students from junior high school and high school in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The results obtained from a questionnaire survey that was administered as a debriefing tool revealed increased interest and motivation among the participants with regard to learning about their living life through an enjoyable activity. In addition, the participants’ intentions of making behavioral modifications were heightened through their consciousness of the real-life applications of the game. The keywords used in free-form descriptions often involved terms that denoted the environment such as “eco”, “global environment”, and “energy saving”. The verb-form keywords that were employed by the participants implied cognition, understanding, consciousness, and the amelioration of actions. The investigation also elucidated that the associations between the learning content and real life were understood by the participants.

The Kumamoto Prefectural government has developed a digital archive of data collected in the aftermath of the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake; the collated data are expected to aid in improving the disaster prevention education and facilitate disaster response training to administrative officers. I have thus created three gaming simulations, such as “Chronology,” which sequentially depicts the Kumamoto Prefectural area during an earthquake. Although reactions varied depending on the regions, affiliations, duties, years of experience, and age, the overall gaming simulation received high evaluations, indicating that it can be effectively employed as a manual for understanding the disaster response process. Therefore, I would like to promote “Chronology” as a manual for disaster response training to further improve disaster response capabilities across Japan.

This book contains success stories of introducing Simulation & Gaming into the formal education in Japanese Universities. After theoretically examining merits and demerits in the introduction of Simulation & Gaming techniques into the university education, authors of this book show the readers the detailed description of seven experiments carried out in Japanese universities. The simulation and gaming experiments which are reported in this book are various. They are ‘Foreign Policies of Japanese Feudal Shoguns in the 1630s,’ ‘Game to defend Local Communities in case of Great Earthquakes,’ ‘To Solve Water-sharing Conflicts,’ ‘Game of Local Autonomy,’ ‘Game of Decision-making in Foreign Policies,’ ‘Gaming to establish Consensus in the Negotiations in International Society,’ and ‘Global Simulation Gaming of International Society.’

Authors stress the importance of establishing manuals for making and using Simulation & Gaming in university education. At the end of this book, an author wrote the slogan of the introducing Simulation & Gaming in university education should be “Simple, Smart and Soft.”