Why Do So Few Japanese People Speak English?
With the yen at historically weak levels, Japan has been a particularly hot destination for well-to-do foreigners in recent years. An uptick in economic growth has also perked the interest of international investors. Last February, the Nikkei stock index finally surpassed the previous record high it set on December 31, 1989.
Whether they come for business or pleasure, there is one thing that often surprises visitors to one of the world’s most advanced nations: it can be pretty hard to communicate with anybody. Eight percent of Japanese people are fluent in English, and only 15–28% have some conversational skills — the figure is imprecise because many poll respondents seldom try.
By comparison, conversational proficiency rates in Germany and France are close to 60%; only one in ten Dutchmen does not speak English. Tokyo has the feel of a rich, cosmopolitan metropolis. But those who speak the world’s lingua franca would have a much easier time getting around Mexico City, Marrakech, or Jakarta.
Part of the problem is pure linguistics. Japanese is a language isolate. Whereas English has close ties to other Germanic languages (as well as Romance ones), and attenuated ones to the entire Indo-European family, for a Japanese person, learning any foreign tongue entails starting from scratch.
It is not that the Japanese lack linguistic aptitude. By law, every teenager in the country has to have memorised at least 2,139 unique, often complicated characters on the official jōyō list. And that just covers kanji, the characters adopted from China. Written Japanese also employs two other writing systems, often within the same sentence.
Kanji do create one unusual advantage: because their meaning has nothing to do with how they are pronounced, people who speak entirely different languages can use them to communicate by writing. For example, if you showed, “日本人” to someone in Tokyo, Beijing, or Hong Kong, he would pronounce it nihonjin, ribenren, or jatbunjan — but all would know it to mean “Japanese person.” Historically, it would have worked in Korea and Vietnam as well, though they both went their own ways in the 20th Century.
Japan also imported a lot of Chinese vocabulary. Loanwords account for about 35% of words in tabloids, half in broadsheet newspapers, and 60% or more in scientific papers. It is not nothing. But in terms of spoken language, a Japanese visitor to Shanghai is no better off than an Englishman in Athens.
So, is it simple linguistic bad luck? That is an important factor, but if it were all linguistics, one would expect similar outcomes in other East Asian nations. Chinese and Korean are not any easier, but it is a lot easier to find English speakers in Seoul, and Taiwan aspires to make English a second national language by 2030.
It helps to see Japan’s language challenges with reference to attitudes toward foreign cultures generally. Only 17.5% of Japanese citizens hold passports. Popular destinations in East Asia and Hawaii do their best to cater to those (typically wealthy) ones who do travel abroad. But it does not always go smoothly. The embassy in France has a special hotline for tourists suffering from “Paris syndrome,” a sort of nervous breakdown Japanese people suffer when the romanticised portrayal of the City of Lights gives way to a rougher reality. Japan is such a harmonious, clean, civilised place that it is a hard adjustment to go anywhere else.
Nor do people encounter foreign cultures much at home. Walking around in Tokyo, one certainly hears some English, Mandarin, and Korean. But Japan has always been deeply sceptical of immigration. For much of history until the 1860s, the nation was totally cut off from the outside world.
“Zainichi” Koreans, who have lived in Japan for generations and often speak only Japanese, still face discrimination. There are some programmes for guest workers to fill gaps in the greying economy, but unlike in Europe, they are actually expected to go home. Even a 1990s scheme to bring home ethnic Japanese from Brazil and Peru was reversed, with later governments paying them to leave.
Making more of an effort would clearly bring some benefit to the country. It would facilitate tourism and especially investment — billion-dollar deals tend to come off better when the parties can actually speak to each other. Late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s rare English skills helped him become one of few world leaders to forge a good relationship with American President Donald Trump.
However, as I have explored in depth elsewhere, we live in a changing world. Translation apps, previously clunky tools that would enable you to ask for directions in your language then inform bewildered locals that your hovercraft is full of eels, have improved at the speed of ChatGPT.
Even if they were perfect (which they still are not), I strongly believe that learning a language, even a few words, unlocks a trove of human connection that is, after all, the point of language and human interaction generally. However, for quick, practical exchanges, software can obviate the need for the awkward, hacked-together conversation that have characterised travel since time immemorial. As I usually do, I spent some time before my visit in December with Rosetta Stone-san, but even I sometimes caved and pulled out my phone.
China made a big push, especially ahead of the 2008 Olympics, to get people to learn English. But to the extent people ever did, there has been a notable backslide. When I worked in Shenzhen in the 2010s, it was still necessary to learn Mandarin, but service workers typically had a bit of English; when I returned for a visit last summer, few would even try.
Japan has not really made any concerted effort to change the status quo, and Japanese peoples’ famous gusto for both technology and being antisocial lend well to AI translators. It is possible that renewed gaijin business interest will shift people’s attitudes. As yet, there is no evidence it has.
It would be convenient for the rest of us if Japan were more English-friendly. But it is worth considering that inveterate cultural isolation is part of what has always made the country special. Language barriers are barriers, but they also preserve what they keep inside them. The character for “country,” 国, is made up of that for jade (玉), surrounded by a barrier — something precious in a wall. Getting over that wall is a wonderful opportunity for both sides, but maybe it is not such a problem that it still stands.
