Is your Gakushin application theme design wrong? Dr. Volvox's three eternal and universal principles for academic research plan design that led to a 'full comp' of Gakushin grants

Hello, this is Hamachi.
It is time for young researchers to start preparing their Gakushin applications.

This article is short, but its purpose is grand.
It is not just about contributing to the acceptance of the applications of those who read it.
I am writing this in the hope of promoting academic research by making the creation of research plans themselves more transparent.

I accept refund requests, so there is no risk!

Introduction

What is the most important part of a Gakushin application?

Is it the achievements section?
Is it the research background?

I believe it is the "design of the theme itself".

There are many techniques for writing out there.

However, if the blueprint of "what to ask" is off to begin with, it will not be accepted no matter how well you write it.

Also, in tweets analyzing the reasons for Gakushin failure, I have seen opinions that the theme was too broad and lacked feasibility, or conversely, opinions from senior researchers that it should be an ambitious theme. Such situations are confusing, and I do not think that way of thinking is correct.
I believe that
feasibility and ambition are compatible.

I have been accepted for all Gakushin Research Fellowships (full comp).
Here, "full comp" refers to the experience of being accepted in the major categories of DC/PD and Overseas Gakushin/RPD.
Note that SPD is a special category selected from PDs and the application is the same as PD, so I do not count it, and I did not apply for CPD or Overseas Research Fellow RRA because I did not have the eligibility to apply at the time of the public call.
In addition to this, I have experience being accepted for KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C).
In other words, the content written in this note is the opinion of someone who has methodologies and experience that have repeatedly worked across multiple systems with different evaluation criteria, not someone who just happened to win once.

I will tell you secretly, but I have been using this method ever since DC1.
I thought in the same format, wrote in the same format, and was accepted regardless of the category.
Of course, I updated the content by incorporating progress, and I am confident that it has been refined as a methodology.

As I wrote in another article (The cold reality that there is 'no' option to 'not submit' a Gakushin application), the Gakushin DC1/2 application is the first draft of the doctoral thesis blueprint, and the skill of acquiring funding is required endlessly throughout a researcher's life.
How to build the 'skeleton' of that blueprint is the subject of this article.

And this allows those currently writing the latest (2026) application to write items like 'contribution to comprehensive knowledge' surprisingly easily.
From my perspective, these are items that 'should be easy to write'.

This is because not only obtaining a doctoral degree (writing a doctoral thesis), but also the necessity for a lifetime as a researcher, or rather the meaning of carrying out research itself is packed into the principles listed here.
That is the meaning of the grand term "eternal and universal".

Please note that since I am a basic biologist, the examples in the text are biased toward biology.
However, I have also had the experience of reading the applications of friends in other fields.
From that, I have a conviction that it applies to all of academia.

Here, I will share the three principles of theme design that I have established for creating Gakushin applications.