Puzzle boom hits Japan: Sun Magazines adds Conceptis' puzzles to Oekaki Mate magazine

Monday, October 6, 2003

Since December 2002, Sun Magazine Group, one of Japan’s largest magazine publishers, has been including several Pic-a-Pix and Link-a-Pix puzzles in all issues of Oekaki Mate magazine. Thus, Conceptis has become the first non-Japanese company to provide puzzles to this major Japanese publishing group.

According to Sun Publishing one of the reasons, which led the company into this exceptional decision was Conceptis' puzzle artwork, as it has "an interesting foreign taste". With that Conceptis has done one more step in making its picture-forming logic puzzles more popular and more accessible to puzzle fans around the world. Conceptis puzzles, or Oekaki-Logic as they are named in Japan, have become an important part of Japanese pastime and have a strong relation to other Japanese culture motifs. "Japanese people admire accuracy, persistence and logic" says Fujisaki. "It is not surprising that in Japan more picture-forming logic puzzle magazines are printed than in all of the rest of the world".

Oekaki Mate is an 8-year-old magazine dedicated to Oekaki-Logic picture-forming logic puzzles. With 122 pages and over 80 B&W and color puzzles, Oekaki Mate sells over 150,000 copies every two months and stands as one of Japan’s most popular magazines in this puzzle category. In addition to Oekaki-Mate, Sun Magazine publishes 9 additional magazines in other puzzle categories.

With 136 employees and 108.5 billion Yen revenue (900 million USD), the Tokyo based publisher consists of two main divisions: Sun Shuppan, and Magazine Magazine, which is responsible for the entertainment magazines.

Founded in 1977, Sun Magazine today publishes over 40 magazines with a variety of content targeted at several market segments such as woman’s comics, men’s fashion, fishing, adult entertainment, games, horse racing and pachinko.

Related resources

• Conceptis Pic-a-Pix