Friday, February 01, 2008

The Anti-Capitalist

Fabulous story on Dr. Kawashima, the inventor of the Nintendo DS game "Brain Training." It seems that Kawashima is a professor at Tahoku University in Japan. He's made something like 2.4 billion yen in royalties from sales of the game he designed. University rules stipulate that the school gets half the money, but Kawashima gets to keep the rest.

Except that he doesn't want to.

"Everyone in my family is mad at me but I tell them that if they want money, go out and earn it," says the 48-year-old professor . . .

But instead he has poured his own half into funding research into ageing and cancer and is happy to live off an annual salary of around £50k.

1 comment:

CEJ said...

I think that is Tohoku University, a top science institution in the national university system (now former national university system, though much of the system is still there after 'de-nationalization'.)