In the Japanese Curriculum guideline published in December 1998 and implemented in 2002, regulations such as the limitation on the number of digits for decimal multiplication were changed.
"[3] The mass media also picked up on this issue, and it wrongly became widely believed in society that "as a result of the relaxed education system, pi is now taught as 3.
[11][12] As a criticism of the decline in scholastic achievement and the relaxed education system, "Pi is 3" was widely covered in weekly[13][14][15] and monthly[2][16] magazines and other mathematics-related journals.
[22] In the 1998 Revised Curriculum guideline in Japan, the calculation of decimals in the fifth grade of elementary school is, Because of the above limitation, this led to the misunderstanding that 3 must be used as pi.
[26] This led to widespread public awareness of the misunderstanding that pi is now taught as 3 because of the relaxed education system.
"[27] In the second report of the Japanese Central Council for Education on February 23, 2003, the policy of emphasizing scholastic ability was formulated.
[8] In response to this situation, Masahiro Kaminaga, an associate professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Tohoku Gakuin University, confessed that he had been convinced that "relaxed education is a foolish reform that teaches pi as 3."
[3] In Nisio Isin's novel Zaregoto, a scene appeared in which the truncated decimal point is introduced as "the tragedy of 0.14".
[39] The theme song of "Yutori-chan," an animation about Japan's "Yutori" generation, includes the lyrics "3.1415 pi is approximately 3.