Why Learn Japanese?

Irked by this jaundiced response to a query on Slashdot asking for advice on learning Japanese, I thought I'd expantiate a bit on whether and why it's worth learning at all. Why should a Westerner bother with a language so difficult to master when much easier and more readily useful alternatives like Spanish and French are so widely taught?

For me, the path to Japanese was straightforward. I'd realized from a very young age that Asia was going to become an ever more important region in the years ahead, and it seemed essential to me that I gain a better understanding of the region than is available to anyone whose learning about a culture must be filtered through what others choose to translate; as such, having been admitted to a college which has one of the best Asian language teaching programmes in the United States, it was a given that I'd have to take one of Chinese or Japanese for long enough at least to eventually be able to attain mastery on my own (which meant somehow fitting two years of intense language study into a programme already packed with graduate math courses). That this decision was the right one is attested to in my mind by the fact that within 9 months of seriously taking up Japanese study again, I've now reached the point where I'm watching TV, reading magazines and working through serious literature without any real difficulty - and that is why you see links to the Nikkei Shimbun and NHK online on my periodical bar, and why you can expect that there'll be a lot more Japan coverage on here going forward.

But all of the above doesn't really address the utilitarian question of why I chose Japanese over Chinese, despite the speakers of the latter language being far more numerous; isn't Mandarin Chinese supposed to be the "language of the future"? I'll readily grant that the importance of Mandarin will only grow with the continued expansion of China's economy, and this was something I was well aware of before making my choice, but there was more to my decision than a raw calculation of economic potential (and in any case Japan's economy is still larger on a pure dollar basis, which is what matters in international trade). So what made the difference, then?

China's history and traditional culture are incredibly impressive and immensely fascinating, it is true, but the China of Li Bo and Ming vases is not the communist behemoth of today, and I wanted more from my studies than an opportunity to pick over the remains of a cultural heritage which is best preserved outside China's borders amongst the 20 million people of Taiwan. I wanted to learn a language employed in a culture whose manifestation in the here and now I could happily engage with, and looking at China and Japan, there is simply no question that Japan wins here by a knockout, and will continue to do so for the indefinite future, even on the highly dubious assumption that China ever democratizes. Japan is not perfect by any means - no nation is - but it is certainly a free, liberal country, with a press which puts the rest of Asia's to shame for vibrancy and a diversity of opinion amongst its citizenry which ensures that mass manias of the "Dokdo is our land!" or "Kill the American/Japanese pigs!" variety are unheard of. Faced with a choice between devoting myself to the study of a language primarily spoken in a country stifled by authoritarian rule and obsessed with nursing old grievances indefinitely, or one whose native speakers seem to have similar values to those I find praiseworthy or at least sensible, it makes perfect sense that I should opt for the latter.

Now, as for the rewards of learning Japanese, I'll readily admit that making the big bucks has not been one of them (not yet, at any rate); compared to the Chinese diaspora, the number of Japanese speakers outside Japan is miniscule, and most Japanese firms which do business abroad are well past the stage when simply knowing their language is enough to make any candidate a home-run regardless of any other skills. The odds of running into a situation in Europe or the US in which Japanese will prove vital, in the way Spanish or German can be, are virtually non-existent, so the language isn't worth the effort if that's where one's priorities lie. Unless one has or intends to do a lot of business with Japan, the return on one's investment in learning such a demanding language will almost certainly not be worth it.

No, for me the benefits of studying the language to date have lain elsewhere, primarily in the cultural and intellectual realm. Not only do I now have access to a vast world of literature of which only the smallest portion is ever translated into English, but I also get to partake in what I please of the artistic and entertainment output of 120 million people, rather than having to patiently wait for other parties to drop a few crumbs of their own choosing on my lap. Indeed, I probably now see 3-4 hours of Japanese TV programming for every hour of American television I watch*, and not just because it's a good way to keep getting exposure to the language: a lot of Japanese television is just plain better than the American stuff, more complex, more mature, less given to pat endings with everything neatly resolved for the best and villains getting their comeuppance. Finally, leaving aside the entertainment factor, I also have the window into Asia that I wanted from the start - understanding Japanese culture is a valuable step in understanding that of its neighbors, while the country's media naturally have a much keener interest in what goes on in that part of the world than the Western media does, as well as lacking the overwhelming tendency to exoticize and "orientalize" its coverage to meet expectations of an "inscrutable East" peopled by "wacky" denizens ...

In closing, my advice to those curious about taking the language up: if you don't have a pressing practical reason to, don't have the discipline to stick with a task that will take you several years of effort, and aren't really interested in learning more about today's Japan than the bizarre stuff you can glean from reading WaiWai, you probably shouldn't bother. If what you want from Japan is to be able to go play the Fascinating Blue-Eyed Interloper (aka Charisma Man©), surrounded by adoring young women eager to "learn English" horizontally, then studying Japanese might even be a disadvantage for you - just be white and you'll get all the action you want (this is true all across Asia). If your priorities are similar to mine, however, or you simply like an intellectual challenge and have the ability to hyperfocus on a single goal for months on end (again, like me), then you ought to do well: it's a fun language to study, pleasing to the ear and highly logical once you get past the horribly complex orthography.

*As for British programming, the less said the better; maybe once every two years something new comes out worth paying attention to, but the rest of the time it's just the sort of dreary and/or politically hectoring crap you'd expect of "sophisticated" European welfare-socialists ...

Comments

[Kenji]

Abiola, this comment doesn't relate directly to your post, but I would be interested in your thoughts on how to raise children to become bilingual or multilingual, given your language skils.

[Abiola]

I don't see that there's anything to it other than making sure they're regularly exposed to the target languages one has in mind, and that they're given incentives to actively use them (being able to understand and being able to produce sentences aren't the same thing, as I know all too well from some of my cousins). Pretty much nothing short of almost complete cultural isolation of the sort attainable only by living in an enclave can stop children from learning the language of the majority culture in which they reside, so any special efforts one should make ought to be in service of the other languages they won't be getting that all-pervasive exposure to, e.g. parents sticking exclusively to said language when at home and when talking with relatives, and relegating the majority language to dealing with outsiders, or arranging special immersion classes which take place say 5 days a week, and reinforcing these by giving the children an extra hour or two of programming in the language every day.

The long and short of it is that learning multiple languages is something any child will automatically accomplish if given sufficient incentive and exposure, part of which means, say, immigrant parents not being ashamed or hesitant about speaking their language before outsiders, and thereby giving their own children a negative impression. One reads all sorts of nonsense about allowing children to master their own "native" language before being exposed to others, but all that pontificating is nothing more than ignorance driven by xenophobia. The latter one leaves such learning, the harder it gets.

[Chuckles]

Can one appreciate the Japanese classics without some working knowledge of classical Chinese?

Though I must say, the response of the Slashdotter borders on bizzare. "Bring your yourself down to their level"? "lacking social skills"? "Avoiding complex and deep issues"? "Rude brush offs"? " What planet?
Reminds me of a saying I cooked up sometime ago: Inside the heart of every Japocynic lies the broken heart of a Japanophile.
And I dont mean Japanophile in a derogatory sense here. Though, a certain kind of social immaturity *is* guaranteed to turn Japan (especially) into a nightmare for anyone.

Sometime ago, a famous American Cancer researcher died (Robert W. Miller). He worked in Japan after the war with radiation victims etc. It said in his obituary that when interviewing American researchers for positions in Japan he would ask them if they liked The New Yorker magazine. If Yes, he concluded they were good prospects for the job. Nuff said.

BTW Abiola, what do you consider serious Japanese literature?

[Chuckles]

And people have to stop spreading this meme that Japanese is a difficult language to learn. It is NOT. I wonder how and where this got started. But it makes no sense whatsoever.

[Abiola]

"BTW Abiola, what do you consider serious Japanese literature?"

The sort of stuff that gets literary reviews, and wins its writers nominations for the Akutagawa Prize.

"And people have to stop spreading this meme that Japanese is a difficult language to learn. It is NOT. I wonder how and where this got started."

The language itself isn't difficult, but the writing system is fiendishly hard to master, and the fact is that without literacy one can't expand one's vocabulary rapidly enough to engage in meaningful discussions with adults. The 1,066 educational kanji are the bare minimum one needs to break through that barrier, and even then few non-Asian foreigners manage to overcome this hurdle, let alone mastering all 2230 Jinmeiyo kanji in use before the list was radically expanded in 2004. In practical terms one really needs to know about 3,000 kanji to be confident about being able to read most any text put before one, and this is an achievement only a rare few Westerners ever manage.

[Jim]

Kenji, I can add a couple of observations to the good points Abiola makes.

It is important for any learner to experience the langugae he is learning as a real medium of communication, not juts an object of academic study or some cultural relic. That's crucial> When Abiola mentions immersion, that may be part of what he is saying.

Secod, it is crucial for children learning a langugae to be expeosed to adult speakers of the language having adult conversations in adult language. Kids need to experience the ful range of the language if the language is to compete with the dominant language outside the home. That means academic vaocabulary, discourse mechanisms, etc . For instance Korean immigrant parents here in the Puget Sound area remark that their kids do not learn the full range of the honorific system because they don't interact with enough old poeple often enough to really exercise that part of the grammar.