Japanese and English language – A complicated relationship.

This October I started an internship at Travesia, Inc. in Tokyo. I studied Economy and Business at the University of Venice in Italy and before coming to Japan I did not know much about this country but in the short time I've been here, my conception of Japanese people has changed quite a bit.

When I thought of Japanese people, many stereotypes springed to my mind. Reserved, well-balanced and with a willing of perfectionism: always very meticulous and organized. Stereotypes are almost never quite right, but as far as the Japanese are concerned, many of these adjectives can faithfully describe the “characters” of most of the population. But there is a way to break down all these adjectives. A Japanese person can also be clumsy, uncertain and brash, and this evidently happens in the situations when they have to speak in English.

I have had several occasions to understand how much it is difficult to speak English even here, in the capital of Japan.

View of Tokyo station from Shin-Marunouchi Building.

There are many examples I could cite, and I will talk about the most recent. One of the most beautiful ways I've discovered to visit a city is to ride a bike. Even here I was given a bike as a means of transportation: this led me to search for a parking space due to the lack of one in my house. Once the parking was found, the problem of communicating with the people in charge of the parking lot arose.

After talking with four different people, several calls with my Japanese boss and a big hand from google translate we somehow managed to make ourselves understood. Not to mention that every time I go there now, my fame as “a foreign who does not speak Japanese” precedes me. These things happen on a daily basis in the life of a person who does not speak the local language in Japan. You have to get used to it quickly and many times it all comes down to laughter.

But when this problem happens in a workplace, it gets more complicated.

I first hand experience by myself and I got a confirmation of this conjecture when we attended CEATEC, Japan's largest computer and electronics fair and conference. Held every October and for four days, the vast majority of Japan's electronics manufacturers showcase their cutting-edge and innovative technology to visitors and the press at the Makuhari Messe Convention and Exhibition Centre in Chiba, Tokyo. The largest and smallest variety of companies can be found here, operating domestically and also internationally.

https://www.ceatec.com/ja/CEATEC

I went there as an exhibitor under the Royal Danish Embassy. We were there showing Valuer, a Danish start up, founded in Copenhagen. Valuer is an AI-driven platform backed by expert analyst that uses Natural Language processing to provide solutions for navigating the world's innovation ecosystem.

https://www.valuer.ai/

My job at the exhibition consisted in visiting the booths of the attending companies, in order to hear a presentation of their new technologies. We could ask more about their work, exchange business cards (a very important ceremony here in Japan) and if there was the opportunity we could talk about our start-up. Our interlocutors were very careful to explain their products in detail and confidently, usually in a very determined and nonchalant manner. The problem arose when I mentioned that I could not speak Japanese.

Upon hearing my request to switch the conversation from Japanese to English, a mixture of distress, upset and insecurity crossed their faces, combined with frustration for not being able to explain their technologies as much detailed as possible.

October 2022, Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture.

In 2019 the Institute for International Business Communication, which runs the TOEIC English test, conducted a survey asking workers in Japanese companies what the most important skill they need to know for a future in the business world. The highest response, with 82.6%, was English. At the same time, English was also felt to be the skill most lacking, according to 67% of companies.

Aware of the problem, in the last few years many Japanese companies attempt to make English their official language, discouraging employees from using Japanese at work. It happened with Rakuten, one of the largest Japanese electronic commerce and online retailing company based in Tokyo. Around the year 2010 the company decided that all of their business meetings would be held in English starting 18 months hence. For a while, the majority of the employees stated took english classes, but it gradually stopped, even though they had an ambitious goal. Eighteen months after the language switch, Rakuten evaluated its progress, that was unfortunately very little. Only a small percentage of their employees had achieved a competent level of the English language. Eventually, the audacious resolution of English-only meetings was scrapped.

The need to start learning English is increasingly felt in companies that want to open up to the global market, where English is the language that commands. The problem is less recognize for large companies operating in the Japanese market and which remain more traditional and less willing to using Anglo-Saxon language.

View of Tokyo from Izumi Garden Tower.

Everyone knows that speaking English is not an easy task for Japanese people, even if they study it for hours and hours. Many have the opinion that the fault lies in a sub optimal education, or maybe in the shyness of the Japanese people, or maybe again because of the great difference between the two languages. Furthermore, usually Japanese people tend to have a very precise nature. This involves not speaking and testing their spoken English unless they know it perfectly for fear of making mistakes.  All of this leads a language barrier challenge in Japan.

But if you look at this from a broader prospective and other Asian countries there is nothing really strange about that.

If we think about Asian countries and regions where the English language has an official or semi official status like Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines (where many people speak English as their first or second language),  we can easily notice how all of those countries had many relationships with English speaking countries.

To make some examples, Singapore from its birth and for nearly a century and a half, and again India, Malaysia and Hong Kong were always linked with Britain. Each of these contacts have left various degrees of unique traces in the cultural and linguistic make- up of the places affected. As for Japan, it came in contact with the US after WWII, but the Americans didn't require the Japanese to speak English.

Sometimes the blame is also put in the education system, and in particular in the language education one. The goal of English learning in classrooms has never truly been about language acquisition, at least not in the sense of being able to use English to converse  and relate with others. The primary focus of language classrooms for the past century has rather been about preparing students to pass the English exams in order to enter university.

The general perception from desk research and from conversations with Japanese friends and colleagues, is that less than 10% of Japanese have professional working proficiency in English. This includes all four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. However, if we look solely at English speaking ability (the weakest skill of most Japanese) then the percentage of the nation who have business-level conversation fluency is estimated to be less than 5%, with the majority of these likely working in industries such as academia, interpretation, tourism, finance and others that require speaking English.

The sheer difference between two languages certainly plays a role, whereas mostly European languages are closely related, Japanese and English have extremely distinct vocabulary, writing systems, and sentence structure.

It seems like there is a resistance to studying and speaking english in Japan, not only for everyday life but also for work life. But given demographic trends, Japan will have little choice but to up its English game or fall behind in a competitive global economy.

All this must not stop the desire to visit Japan to dig into the complex Japanese culture, discover more meaningful work experiences and meet interesting people. You might only get used to using a translator and make it your best friend.

Japanese after a day of work around Tokyo station.

SOURCES

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00583/english-abilities-crucial-but-lacking-in-japanese-workplaces.html

https://www.mitsue.co.jp/english/global_ux/blog/201709/14_1700.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/10/21/130733615/japanese-companies-go-english-only-headaches-outrage-follow

https://www.strategy-business.com/article/When-a-Japanese-Company-Adopted-English-as-a-First-Language