The Dead Zone Writing Competition

Welcome to Season 2 of Bakemono Classroom's first and only Japanese writing competition, The Dead Zone! Whether you wish to send shivers down spines, ignite laughter or transport readers to realms unknown, you can write whatever your imagination will allow.

This year the theme is Yokai! Meaning your story must be about or feature a yokai of your choosing.

There are two divisions in the competition:

Primary and Middle school beginners Japanese. To enter, students must be beginner Japanese students from either Primary/Elementary and Middle School.

Each school may only have one entry per division, so teachers may need to hold their own mini competitions to decide who makes it through. Alternatively, each entry can be the collaborative effort of an entire class through things like TPRS, where you co-create a story together.

One winner will be decided from each division, Primary and Middle.

Each winner receives, one copy of Strange Japanese Yokai: A guide to weird and wonderful monsters, demons and spirits. As well as a copy of every Bakemono Classroom book!

Competition entries must be submitted by the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, 2024. Spooky!

Judging will then take place, winners will be announced and you will be contacted.

Firstly, I would appreciate it if you would share news of this competition within your local school areas and networks - I really hope there is a large pool of entries.

While The Dead Zone is designed to give post-assessment period (in Australia anyway) some purpose, you could treat this competition like an assessment, to motivate your students to get more involved. Better yet, did you know that students can sell and make profit off the books that they create on Storyjumper?

What better way to assess your students after a year of comprehensible Japanese than to have them kill two bird with one stone?

By entering this competition, entrants accept that stories that submitted stories may be hosted on the Bakemono Classroom website (with your blessing of course).

Depending on rules or regulations in your State or Country, I would encourage students to maintain some anonymity with the work they submit. Using initials, a class name or school name can get around this problem. Additionally, books that are submitted to the contest should not contain ways to identify students, either through name or pictures.

The conditions of the competition are subject to change, as I am disorganised and likely to forget important details.