Software for Learning | Games and Simulations | Introduction |

Cosmology of Kyoto:
Tales of the Heian Millenium

©1993 SOFTEDGE Inc

You are the Navigator in the City of Fact and Fable that Shaped the Japansese Mind

Cosmology of KYOTO is set in the 10th and 11th centuries AD, when the Heian period when Kyoto was known as Heiankyo. It includes episodes drawn from a large body of tales, legends and illustrated literature produced during or after the Heian period. These vignettes are edited into interactive, experiental forms, to allow the user to realistically sense the worldview and lifestyle of an ancient time.

This CD-ROM offers two modes of interaction that you may change while using the program:

  1. Game Mode. Explore the city and inhabitants of Heiankyo. As a player you are "an ordinary human being, faced with opportunities, driven by desires, and bound to die. Your actions determine your path through this world, and many reincarnations to come." You may meet troublemakers, and demons, enter Paradise or Hell, be reborn, and re-enact the story of a scholar who played the devil in a high-stakes game of backgammon.

  2. Reference Mode. A database of over 400 screens of text and pictures that gives background information for the time and place where you are in the game.
See also:

Evaluations by..

  1. Mary Long, South Mountain Community College
  2. Steve Meredith, Scottsdale Community College
  3. Tamaye Csyionie, Scottsdale Community College

Learning Activities

Each reviewer describes a learning activity that uses Cosmology of Kyoto.