Toryo Hojo（北条投了）, master of satire

Today, I'll tell you about Japanese board game designer, Toryo Hojo（北条投了）.

User summary:
北条投了 (Toryo Hojo) is a Japanese game designer, active in Osaka, Japan. Creating a broad variety of games ranging from heavy games, such as railroad equity game and war games, to light games. Often creates games which involve current affairs.
(from BoardGameGeek)

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/11094/toryo-hojo

At the latest Tokyo Game Market, Toryo Hojo sold "Autumn price destruction pack" for 500 yen.

Among participants in the game market, there are people who challenge the "500 yen game", making and selling games with a minimum budget.  A strong restriction of minimum budget became a catalyst, and this challenge gave birth to works such as "Love Letter" "Dungeon of Mandom(Welcome to the dungeon)".  At the recent Game Market, the number of games that spent more money on printing increased, and 500 yen games became a less common topic.  Even in that situation, Toryo Hojo continues to sell low budget games.

"Autumn price destruction pack" contains 4 games, 1 playing cards, and some tokens.  2 of 4 games can be played only with playing cards.  From among them, I'd like to pick up "Trump Wall".

"Trump wall" is a 2 player game where the President who wants to make a wall from the east to the west and the immigrant who wants to make a way from the south to the north fight.  Each player plays a playing card and puts a token to the corresponding location on the map, and aims to connect the two ends of the map.  (Japanese people call playing cards as "trump" because of past mistranslation.)  "Trump Wall" is a game that combines fun and satire. And the satire is the true point of Toryo Hojo.

Many of his satire games are related to Japanese affairs and therefore difficult to explain, but I will introduce only one.  "Katsu Curry?! This is not the time for that!（カツカレー喰ってる場合か！？）".  This is satire game to politicians who lack the sense of money.

It is currently an era of worldwide economic deflation. The politicians of your country seek to understand the common people. Players become the leaders of an opposition party who have taken it upon themselves to reestablish economic responsibility. Each player will bid to enforce a "fair and folksy" price of a variety of goods and services. Each time a player sets a price, they will earn honor points. The winner, and new political leader, is the player who earns the most points. (from BoardGameGeek)

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/157304/katsu-curry-not-time 

Also, he is fast from happening the incident until creating the game from it.  Also, he creates a satire game in short time after an incident occurs.  For example, the House of Representatives election was held in Japan in October, and he sold a game related to it at Tokyo Game Market in December.

Just to be sure, he is not a designer who can only make satire games.  His game "Age of Craft" was remade as "Colony" by Bézier Games in 2016.

As I said before, because many of his games are related to current affairs in Japan, the opportunities for English-speaking people reading this blog to meet his game may be few.  Nevertheless, I want everyone to know that Japan's board game world has funny talent like him.