Brain Age’s Dr. Kawashima declines royalties

Ryuta Kawashima turns down Brain Age royalties - Image 1If you’ve ever played a Brain Age game, then you’ve probably seen the digitized version of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima’s face, and you probably are a lot smarter after trying one of his games. Did you know, however, that Dr. Kawashima himself turned down the opportunity to become a multimillionaire?

As you can probably guess, Mrs. Kawashima wasn’t happy. More after the jump!

Brain Age's Dr. Kawashima - Image 1If you’ve ever played Brain Age, then you’ve probably seen Dr. Ryuta Kawashima’s digitized face. More importantly, you probably got just a little bit smarter (or possibly a lot smarter, results will vary) after trying one of his games. Did you know, however, that Dr. Kawashima himself turned down the opportunity to become a multimillionaire?

That’s right. Dr. Kawashima actually turned down the royalties towards Brain Age. Instead, he’s planning on using the royalties he’s supposed to receive, which amount to at least US$ 11 million, to fund his research into developing inventions for Japan‘s growing elderly population.

Kawashima built a 300-million yen lab at Tohoku University’s Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, where he works, with another lab worth 400 million yen set to be completed in March.

Though he’s starred in a highly-successful video game, he himself doesn’t play video games. His kids also aren’t allowed to play on weekdays, and are only allowed an hour on weekends.

Notes Dr. Kawashima,

What is scary about games is that you can kill as many hours as you want. I don’t think playing games is bad in itself but it makes children unable to do what they should do such as study and communication with the family.

He’s certainly putting the money to good use, and though he doesn’t play games, he’s still a cool guy for doing good work to help other people and dedicating himself to it.

Via AFP

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