The exam is a national licensing test for doctors, which generally requires test-takers to be at least sixth-year medical students at a university. It is required to have completed a university's medical program to take the exam and Japanese universities offer six-year programs. Exam takers can take the question sheets home after the test. In addition, the health ministry posts the exam's questions on its website after the test day every year. Kaneda manually entered all 400 questions and answer choices from the February exam into ChatGPT. He could do so because a student who is senior to him took the test and brought home the question sheets.