Toilet humour: ‘Poop’ books help Japanese children study kanji

For young Japanese children, learning more than 1,000 kanji characters during their six years of elementary school is a monumental task, but the addition of some toilet humour has proved a huge success.

A workbook series that features a heavy dose of the word unko, the Japanese word for “poop”, has quickly sold over a million copies since its release in March. The series’ main selling point is that it engages children by using the word “poop” in every single example sentence.

“Adults would raise their eyebrows, but for children, the word ‘poop’ is magical and makes things fun,” said Yusaku Furuya, 40, the author of the books.

The six-book Unko Kanji Drill series contains a total of 3,018 example sentences concocted by Furuya for the 1,006 kanji symbols taught at elementary schools.

One example demonstrates that the sentences do not need to make sense in order to appeal to children. In the fourth grader’s edition, the book teaches the kanji character used in the noun “meeting” with the sentence: “We are starting a poop meeting now.”

The workbooks let children practice writing kanji while demonstrating the different ways they are pronounced, how they are used in a sentence, as well as the stroke order of each character.