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Given the many economic problems confronting Japan these days, foreign-language proficiency might seem like it ought to be pretty low on its list of priorities. Japan may be a manufacturing powerhouse and home to a highly literate and numerate workforce. But when it comes to mastery of English, your typical Japanese is a real slacker.
Some Japanese see this as a serious competitive disadvantage that undermines Japan's global clout, particularly in the arenas of technology, commercial exploitation of the Internet, and finance, where English-language proficiency is a must. Everybody from Eisuke Sakakibara, former Finance vice-minister for international affairs, to political-opposition leader Shigefumi Matsuzawa wants to launch a national campaign to establish English as Japan's second official language. If they get their way, elementary students won't just be mastering their Kanji strokes -- but also the Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
There's no denying that Japan has a problem in the globalizing economy. The nation ranks 18th in international comparisons of English proficiency as measured by the standard Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Japanese students and execs score far lower on average than their counterparts elsewhere within Asia. For what it's worth, they do better than students in Afghanistan, Laos, and Cambodia.
CRITICS SCREAM.
That's an increasingly urgent problem in Japan, because 80% of the world's Netizens communicate and carry on transactions in English. Surely it's also one reason why the world's No. 2 economy is so underrepresented on major international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Too few Japanese can speak the language of the Net and international finance -- which is English.
This debate has touched a very raw nerve among the guardians of Japan's national identity. "Are you kidding?" the critics scream. "Isn't it bad enough that gaijin with loud ties are running Nissan and taking over Tokyo banks, brokers, and insurance companies. Does globalization require Japan to surrender its cultural sovereignty as well?"
Granted, you won't hear many calls for a national drive to master, say, Mandarin or Hindi, though a big chunk of the global population speaks in these tongues. And you'd be surprised how few U.S. businesspeople swinging through Tokyo bother to pick up even a few routine Japanese phrases as a courtesy. The reaction of Japan's traditionalists is perfectly understandable.
NO IDENTITY CRISIS.
But, hey, nobody said life was fair. Right now at least, English is the dominant language of global commerce. And there's no question that if Japan truly opens up its economy to foreign investment and finance, bigger opportunities will accrue to new hires and midlevel executives fluent in both languages.
The question is what Japan can do to emerge as a more prominent global player. First, let's drop the doomsday talk that an increase in English-language fluency will do grave damage to the nation's identity. Can anyone really see Japanese ending up in the linguistic graveyard along with Latin? That defies belief, given Japan's tremendous importance in the global economy -- and its 125 million citizens.
The real issue in the English debate may be educational reform. One reason Japanese students have trouble with English stems from Japan's fixation with rote learning. I got a taste of that when I passed a Japanese intermediate-proficiency exam given by the Education Ministry in 1998. The test covered kanji (the Japanese characters borrowed from Chinese writing), basic grammar via sentence patterns, reading, and listening comprehension. But there is no measure of how well you can actually speak the language in a variety of situations. So it's really a memorization game -- and plenty of books are out there to help you get a passing grade.
But passing the test doesn't mean you'll achieve the efficiency you need to really function well in Japanese society. My 3-year-old daughter, Marie, sometimes corrects my everyday Japanese. (But I know more kanji characters than she does. So there.)
CHANGE OF APPROACH.
Some of the biggest resistance to a reform of language training is coming from the Education Establishment. Japanese teachers weak on English don't want to confront the problem, for obvious reasons. Others don't want to give more clout and responsibility to foreign native speakers of English at their schools. And as it is now, English-language training doesn't really begin in earnest until around high school level, anyway.
So if Japan wants to stop taking flack from South Korean or Singaporean pundits about its weakness in English, its whole approach to education will probably have to change. In the meantime, let's not confuse the issue with wacky arguments about foreign-language training as some sort of covert threat to Japanese culture.
For centuries, Japan has been swayed -- and strengthened -- by the import of foreign ideas. Just repeat after me, my Japanese friends: "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain." Or is it in the plain? Sorry, I'll have to get back to you on that.
Bremner, Tokyo bureau chief for Business Week, offers his views every week for BW Online
EDITED BY THANE PETERSON
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