1 in 120 Million

How to play

1. 1Press “Start a life now,” and the prefecture and family you are born into are decided. You can change the era (from the Taishō era to 2050), how the draw works, the length of a lifetime, and your own home prefecture in “Settings.”
2. 2A year takes about 21 seconds (on the 30-minute setting; about 7 seconds on 10 minutes). Choose how to spend each year, and from age 18 you can also decide your spending.
3. 3When a choice about school, work, marriage, illness, and so on appears, choose within the time limit. If you don't, it is decided automatically based on statistics.
4. 4When a life ends, you can see its record and the lives of three born on the same day. You can also live again as your child, or start again from the same birth.

FAQ

Is the prefecture you are born in really random?

Yes. The prefecture you are born in is drawn in your browser with a probability proportional to the number of births in each prefecture in 2024 (you can switch to population in the settings). Your sex, how well off your family is, the number of siblings, and more are also decided by probabilities based on statistics. We never pick the result.

What are the odds of being born in Tokyo?

When drawing by births, Tokyo had 84,207 births in 2024, about 12.3% of the national total, or about 1 in 8. Tottori, the prefecture with the fewest births, had 3,092, about 1 in 222.

How is it different from 1 in 8 Billion?

1 in 8 Billion is the world edition: it follows which country or territory in the world you are born in, using statistics from the UN and others. 1 in 120 Million narrows this down to Japan's 47 prefectures and follows a life through national statistics for each prefecture, such as births, life expectancy, university enrollment, and wages, across six eras from the Taishō era to 2050.

Where does the data come from?

We process government statistics such as Vital Statistics and the Prefectural Life Tables (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare), Population Estimates (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications), and the School Basic Survey (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). See “About the data” for details.

Is my record sent anywhere?

No. Your progress, saved games, Prefecture album, and last words are stored only in this device's browser. Only when you press a share button does a summary, such as the prefecture you were born in and your age at death, go into the URL.

How long does it take?

Choose a lifetime of about 10, 30, or 60 minutes (30 by default). You can also pause, speed up to 16×, or use “Skip to the next choice” to move ahead.

What does 1 in 123.8 million mean?

It means one of Japan's total population of about 123.8 million (123,801,750, Population Estimates, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, as of October 1, 2024). “1 in 120 Million” is a rounded way of saying it. In this game, however, the prefecture you are born in is decided not by population but by a probability proportional to each prefecture's births in 2024 (in the settings, you can switch to a draw proportional to population).