Interest
Ohenro Girls Promote Internet Security in Public Awareness Campaign
posted on by Eric Stimson
The youth section of the Tokushima Prefecture Police Department is using the cast of Ohenro. to promote safety in online and smartphone interactions. The public awareness poster below shows Chiwa engaged in a text conversation with a stranger, and she's about to reveal her name. It asks its readers to follow the "four promises" of online and smartphone interactions: use software to filter out "harmful" content, respect the other person's feelings, never meet with an Internet acquaintance in real life, and seek help if you run into trouble. It then provides the number for the police's "young telephone" hotline for dealing with crime against children.
Keiji Kitano, head of the youth section, explains that the characters were chosen to appeal to the young. Tokushima Prefecture has seen a rise in crimes against children, with cases of soliciting obscene photos rising from six in 2012 to 12 this year. A thousand copies of the poster have been printed and sent to police stations and boxes around the prefecture.
Ohenro. is an anime series about three girls taking Shikoku's famous 88-temple pilgrimage. It was aired exclusively in Shikoku and nearby Okayama Prefecture in 2014. It is adapted from a manga that ran in Tokushima Prefecture's local newspaper, the Tokushima Shimbun, beginning in 2010 and was designed to drum up interest in the pilgrimage among the young in anticipation of its 1,200th anniversary.
[Via Tokushima Shimbun and Rocket News 24; Image from Netlab]
