Japan has about 300,000 kinds of family names, and this is the second place of the world(By the way, the first place is US and the third place is Finland). Therefore the big data inflection entertainment TV program "
Data Navi" of Japanese public broadcasting NHK released the free funny browser game "
Name Kingdom" using the big data of Japanese family names. You can play this by both of PC and smartphones.
This is casual game that players fight against enemy characters of each Japanese prefecture by power of own family name.
At first we input own family name. You can input an imaginary family name if you don't like inputting the real name. But it must be a kanji(漢字), and only kanji four characters can input.
Then, we choose own native prefecture. Each prefecture have characters associated with the area, but all of them are funny.
This game displays the number of the family names every each prefecture by ranking. In addition, the family names express regionality in Japan. For example, Okinawa(沖縄)'s general family name is rare in other prefectures, because originally Okinawa was an independent kingdom called Lewchew(Luchu or Loochoo: 琉球). The family names established for the kingdom era are used in current Okinawa. We can know the regionality of family names in this game. By the way, Akita that is my native prefecture was a place of banishment of nobles in the Heian era(平安時代), and escape of loser warriors in the Sengoku era(戦国時代). So there are many family names in conjunction with them. My ancestors were loser warrior, too, but the detailed data did not come out because unfortunately my family name "Komoriya(籠谷)" was too rare and was the minority.
In the battle, we put kanjis together, make family names and hit them on enemies. The majority family names of own prefecture have strong power and can give enemies much damage. It is a key of the victory whether you choose what kind of kanjis before a time limit, and you make what kind of family names. We can see data of the family names that each other used for attacks during battles.
This is an interesting inflection example of big data. If you learn in Japanese, in particular kanjis, this is a pleasant casual game. You will come across many Japanese strange family names here.
