Reading Japanese isn’t easy — even for the Japanese.
Take Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso for example. He’s made so many public blunders that an opposition lawmaker tried to give him a reading test during a televised session of parliament.
The Japanese leader bungled the word for “frequent,” calling Japan-China exchanges “cumbersome” instead. Another time, he misread the word toshu (follow), saying fushu — or stench — and sounded as if he were saying government policy “stinks.”
While the media and Aso’s political rivals have been quick to heap ridicule, many Japanese have seen a bit more of themselves in Aso’s goofs than they would like to admit. Since his missteps, books designed to improve reading ability have become all the rage.
Aso’s nemesis is his mother tongue’s notoriously tricky mishmash of Chinese characters and its two sets of indigenous syllabaries.
Here is what he — and all Japanese — are up against.
Just reading the newspaper requires knowledge of about 2,000 characters. Another 50,000 are less common but useful to recognize.
And that’s just for starters.
Most characters have several different pronunciations depending on the context. For instance, the two characters in the prime minister’s surname can be read several ways. The first character, which means linen, is pronounced asa or ma. The second — meaning life, raw, or to occur or grow — can be pronounced nama, sei, sho or ki, to list just a few possibilities. And together, they are pronounced Aso (Ah-so).
During last month’s televised parliament session, opposition lawmaker Hajime Ishii chided Aso for his stumbles, saying: “We’d better discuss kanji.”
Then holding up a cardboard panel with a list of a dozen words, he asked: “Can you handle them?”
Aso refused to take the impromptu test, but Ishii didn’t back down.
“Today, those who can’t read kanji are scoffed at, and people are rushing to buy textbooks,” he said. “Perhaps you deserve credit for boosting their sales.”
Literacy-boosting books are selling briskly. One titled, Kanji that Look Readable but are Easily Misread, released a year ago, has sold more than 800,000 copies — most of them since Aso’s mistakes first got national attention in November, said Yukiko Sakita, a spokeswoman for Futami Shobo Publishing Co.
“We owe a lot to Prime Minister Aso,” she said. “Many people don’t want to make mistakes like his.”
The book has held the top spot in the weekly best-seller rankings compiled by Japan’s largest distributor, Tohan Co, since the beginning of this year, ahead of The Speeches of Barack Obama, which ranked second for weeks before falling to 17th this week.
“A text like this holding the No. 1 spot is extremely unusual,” said Tohan official Hiroki Tomatsu. “As far as the book ranking is concerned, Mr. Aso beat Mr. Obama.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS