Minae Mizumura - The Fall of Language in the Age of English

The sense of crisis underlying the proposal to make English an official language of Japan is thus quite understandable. Yet in addition to the objections raised earlier, there is a major problem with this goal: proponents are intent on making all Japanese people bilingual. They hold that the current system of English education, with its abysmal results, needs to be changed drastically, as by bringing in native speakers en masse. But as long as the goal is universal bilingualism, such methods will never result in the high-level bilingualism Japan now requires. The only realistic way to develop a cadre of skilled bilinguals is to head in exactly the opposite direction — that is, to give up on the notion of universal bilingualism. This means abandoning once and for all a principle held inviolable (at least on the surface) by the Ministry of Education and the Japanese populace ever since World War II: the principle of egalitarianism. By giving special education opportunities to a select stratum, Japan must choose a path it has until now shunned, a path it has seen as morally wrong.

The national budget cannot be expanded indefinitely to accommodate English education. Not every child is eager to learn English (in fact, English is the most abhorred subject in Japanese schools). It makes no sense to spend the nation’s limited resources equally on those who do want to learn English and those who do not. Those resources should be devoted to a limited pool of talent, the government leading the way. That sort of training cannot be left solely to market forces because doing so would make it accessible only to the rich. Worse, doing so would diminish the likelihood of Japan’s ever gaining the bilinguals it truly needs. Without some guiding principle, the tenets of the market will simply respond to consumers’ demand for more English by creating people who speak English like Americans — a meaningless ability in and of itself. Nor should Japan try to create mere government puppets. The bilinguals Japan truly needs are people capable of defending or criticizing their own country as informed citizens. This requires, first and foremost, thorough grounding in Japan and the Japanese language.

Japanese proponents of nationwide bilingualism often cite Singapore as a model. (Scandinavians are also bilingual, but they look too different from Japanese.) If Singaporeans, who look so much like us, are on their way to achieving bilingualism, then so can we, they argue. Taking Singapore as a model, however, is ludicrously wrong-headed. Unlike Japan, Singapore — a multiethnic, multilingual, former British colony — needs a common language among its diverse population, which is part Malay, part Chinese, and part Tamil. And because it is a multiethnic country, it espouses multilingualism, encouraging people to maintain their ethnic identity by making it compulsory in public schools for children to master their mother tongue — or Mandarin, in the case of ethnic Chinese. This multilingual educational policy may make Singaporeans appear bilingual on the surface, but insofar as written language is concerned, they are in fact Anglophone. The language of instruction in primary and secondary education gradually involves more English, and it is totally English at the college or university level. (Some university courses in Malay, Chinese, and Tamil language and literature are available.) Singaporean writers write predominantly in English. Moreover, as some members of the younger generation are even beginning to use English at home, Singapore might end up becoming a true Anglophone country. To think of it as an ideal bilingual nation is to miss the basic assumption of the new bilingualism, which requires reading and writing proficiency in two languages.

People in the English-speaking world are so used to others speaking in English that they may perhaps have trouble understanding the monumental difficulty of achieving universal bilingualism, and the near impossibility of doing so for native speakers of non-Western languages. But what if all Americans, say, were required to learn Japanese at school — not just to speak the language but to read and write it as well? A little exercise of the imagination will show what fantastic effort it would take to achieve that goal. For Japan, universal bilingualism is not an option.

The Japanese government needs strong conviction to counter the mass hysteria that cries incessantly for more and more English. Above all, it needs to make it its mission to defend the Japanese language by giving it priority over English. One’s identity derives not from one’s nation or blood but from the language one uses; what makes Japanese people Japanese is not their nation or their blood but the Japanese language that they use.

PROTECTING JAPANESE

My proposals for language education are simple. First, concerning English education, teach the fundamentals so that all children acquire a basis for reading proficiency. The importance of being able to read the universal language circulating the globe in this age of the Internet can scarcely be overemphasized. Reading also provides the key to understanding elevated discourse. Then, have only those who wish to study further do so. For a select number, allocate special funds, whether government or private, to develop the cadre of bilinguals that Japan needs. That’s all. (The only thing I might add would be to encourage the study of other foreign languages as well.)

Many Japanese would call such a policy elitist. They would protest, “Think of the feelings of the children left behind!” But children are stronger than that. Those who fear “elite” education also say it will lead to an economically stratified society. Look around, however, and you will see that the existence in Japan of a large middle class renders unlikely the opening of an economic gap between a chosen few and the rest. And, given the thorough education people already receive and the vast number of translated materials available, an information gap seems equally unlikely. Most important, consider what will happen if Japanese thinking does not change and such a policy is not adopted in the schools. Japan will not gain the bilinguals it so desperately needs, but that’s not all. Little by little, before anyone knows it, fine prose writing will meet its demise as people take their own language less seriously in a vain attempt to “globalize.”

This brings me to my second point. The Japanese language arts curriculum should be designed with one basic principle in mind — ensuring that the modern classics continue to be read. If that principle is upheld, the educational reforms I envision will inevitably follow: hours of Japanese language instruction in primary and secondary schools will increase. Students will read a number of works of modern Japanese literature from about a century ago, cover to cover. And in colleges and universities, they will deepen their familiarity with the modern canon.

Of course, I am not suggesting that other types of reading are unworthy. All of us, in the course of our lives, naturally encounter and enjoy all sorts of books, which is well and good — but for most people the world of fine literature is sadly remote. Education has to open doors that the home environment and the marketplace cannot.

These proposals will sound like mere common sense in most Western societies. However, for Japan, a non-Western country, returning to texts dating from the time of the formation of its national language would have far deeper significance. In the West, modern texts are bound culturally with earlier classical texts. However distant the age of Greek classics and the Bible, figures like Apollo, Hercules, and Venus, as well as Noah, Job, and Mary Magdalene, live on in today’s literary works. But such is not the case in Japan. The new literature that arose from what Sōseki called a “sudden twist” becomes more cut off from earlier literature with every passing day. Hence all the more reason to instill the habit of reading classics that date from around the time of that sudden twist, a seminal time when writers still privy to the nation’s full literary heritage drew excitedly on it to give birth to a new language and literature. If Japanese people could reconnect to those modern classics, then despite having twice lost sight of themselves as a nation in the upheavals of recent history, first during the Meiji Restoration and again in the defeat of World War II, they would be able to connect, however hazily, with the Japanese of their ancient forebears and sense that in the Japanese written word they have a true spiritual homeland.