AR
今年も年賀状の季節がやってきました。
Digital tack taken to revive interest in New Year’s cards
The tradition of sending “nengajo,” or New Year’s postcards, has been in decline as people turn to the Internet, social networking and digital gadgets like smartphones instead of putting pen to paper.
Japan Post Co., the postal arm of government-owned Japan Post Holdings Co., is thus hoping to get younger generations interested in writing paper greeting cards this year by introducing a digital feature known as augmented reality, or AR.
“Young people are using smartphones now, and we hope to attract them to the New Year’s greeting card tradition through those smartphones,” said Hiroyuki Sugita, senior manager at logistics and sales at Japan Post.
“By connecting digital to tradition, we want them to discover the fun of sending New Year’s greeting cards,” he said.
Numbers tell the story about the decline in nengajo. Japan Post’s issuance of New Year’s cards peaked in 2003 at 4.45 billion. The number has been falling every year since 2008, and only 3.3 billion have been issued this year.
In a bid to revive interest in the New Year’s tradition, Japan Post this year is selling cards that offer virtual character content, including Hello Kitty and Japan Post’s Poskuma bear mascot, via augmented reality.
Japan Post said all plain New Year’s greeting cards, which account for about 80 percent of the 3.3 billion copies, have an AR feature provided by Sony Corp.
The AR feature is viewable via a special app downloaded on smartphones.
今回気になったのは、“augmented reality”です。通称“AR”と呼ばれ、最近アプリなどで多く耳にする言葉です。調べてみると、「拡張現実感; AR 実世界の映像に仮想的な映像を重ね合わせる技術から出発し, 一般に, 実世界の情報を拡張して利用者に提供する技術。」（コンピューター用語辞典）とありました。
“augment”を調べてみると、「＜権力・人口・収入など＞を（さらに）増加させる；＜価値＞を増す、改良する」という意味がありました。
今回の場合は、年賀状の右上にある切手の部分に、専用のアプリをダウンロードしたうえで、スマートフォンをかざすとキャラクターなどが出てくるというものです。私も含め、学生は年賀状ではなくメールやSNS等で新年の挨拶をすませがちですが、年賀状も書きたいなと思いました。(Green)
