The best games from Seiji Kanai 🇯🇵👨 2025

Looking for a really good game from game designer Seiji Kanai 👨? Then we have just the thing: the list with the best Seiji Kanai games 2025.

Who is Seiji Kanai anyway?

Seiji Kanai has been designing dice, card & board games since 2005. The game designer hails from Präfektur Kanagawa, Japan🇯🇵, was born in 1981 and currently lives in Japan🇯🇵. He is also known as カナイセイジ, Kanai Sage.

Kanai's first game "Dragon Rush" he developed in 2005 at the age of 24 - so he has been designing games for over 20 years. Famous Kanai games are for example Love Letter und die Love-Letter-Serie, Lost Legacy & BraveRats.

Who is Seiji Kanai anyway?

Seiji Kanai has been designing dice, card & board games since 2005. The game designer hails from Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan🇯🇵, was born in 1981 and currently lives in Japan🇯🇵. To our knowledge, it is currently the only professional analog game designer among the nearly 300 in Japan. Kanai, by the way, is spelled カナイセイジ in Japanese, sometimes called "Kanai Sage."

Kanai's first game "Dragon Rush" was developed in 2005 at the age of 24 - so he's been designing games for over 20 years of games. Famous Kanai games include Love Letter and the Love Letter series, Lost Legacy & BraveRats.

Game fair in Essen & awards from Germany brought the breakthrough

In 2008, he exhibited for the first time at SPIEL'08 via JAPON BRAND. In 2012, he was at Spiel'12 with the game "Love Letter". Both the €7 variant with a red bag that was sold initially and the version subsequently sold without a bag for €3 sold out in a very short time.

In 2014, "Love Letter" won the 4th prize at the Deutscher Spielepreis 2014. It was the first Japanese game to win this award.

Game inventor already in his teens

Kanai started making simple "Sugoroku" (a Japanese version of Pachisi) when he was still in his teens. His dream was to one day be able to make a living solely from creating new games.

After dropping out of college, he lived with his parents in Tokyo and supported himself with odd jobs. The underlying motivation for his game development is not so much financial gain, but the joy of providing entertainment for others, he says.

Love Letter brought the breakthrough

There was a contest called "500 Yen Games" at Japan's largest board game event, Game Market. In 2010, he planned to make a game ("Regality & Religion") at a low production cost and sell it for 500 yen (about €4.40 at the time). A publisher had a special offer to print 16 cards very cheaply.

Then, after another game in 2011 ("R"), he finally showed Love Letter at the 2012 "Game Market." At the game fair, publisher AEG also became aware of the game and acquired the license. Everything after that is history.

How good are "Seiji Kanai" games?

There are 4 games by Seiji Kanai in our Top1000 games list, making Kanai the #61 best game author out of a total of 708 authors in our database.

More information about Kanai

More information about Kanai can be found on:

• Kanai's BGG profile
• Kanai's Twitter feed
• official Seiji Kanai website
• Interview with Kanai by Japan Times

List of best games by Seiji Kanai 2025

In this list we have listed the best board games that Seiji Kanai either designed himself - or was involved in designing.

Unfortunately, not all of Seiji Kanai's games are currently available. In the following list you can find all dice, board & card games by Seiji Kanai that you can buy 2025: