As many Japanese parents and teachers will attest¹, getting young children to write and memorise² hundreds of kanji characters can be a thankless task.

 

让小朋友书写和记忆几百个“日文汉字”是一项艰巨的任务，许多日本家长和老师对此都有同感。
 

 

But a new series of study books has generated a surge in interest in stroke order, radicals³ and alternative pronunciations – all thanks to an enduring obsession⁴ among children of a certain age: poo.

 

Scatology-based study in the form of the Unko Kanji Doriru (poo kanji drill) has proved enormously popular among the country's primary school pupils, with their parents' blessing⁵, since the series of books appeared in March.

 

The drills, complete with tips from Professor Poo - an emoji-like turd with glasses and a handlebar moustache - have so far sold 1.83m copies.

 

"I want to make boring study more fun," the publisher, Shuji Yamamoto, told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

 

"Adults may raise their eyebrows⁶, but for children, the word 'poo' is magical and makes things fun," the book's author, Yusaku Furuya, told Kyodo news.

 

While the kanji are arranged thematically to aid memorisation, some of the example sentences border on the surreal. A drill used to teach the kanji for "meeting" reads: "We are starting a poo meeting now."

 

Hinata Shibasaki, seven, is one of the many children who loathed⁷ rote⁸ learning at school but are now fully⁹ fledged kanji converts. "It's funny because poo appears everywhere," he told Kyodo. "I used to hate studying kanji, but I got hooked on this book."

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