Japanese Culture and Language: Resilience
There seems to be quite a big focus on speaking English or being bilingual in Japan. This is not new; my mother was teaching English and 国際理解 (International awareness) in public elementary and secondary schools in Yokohama back in the 1990s.
However now, with Uniqlo and Rakuten announcing that they are an English-speaking companies, there is added pressure for Japanese people to be able to speak English. Sometimes my clients will sound defeated, “I wish I could speak and communicate in English”.
Of course, speaking English is important but when there is such a wide cultural gap and difference in language structure, what is the trade off here? In my career as an interpreter, I have met many talented people, from artists to academics and thinkers of the most cutting edge innovation and I wonder, if they had to concentrate on studying English, would they have been able to horned the skills which took them out of Japan in the first place?
Everybody has their own set of skills and the moment to shine. The example of this is Japanese comedienne, Naomi Watanabe, her make-up tutorial on YouTube’s Vogue channels have millions of views, some of the comments in English admits that they do not know who she is but keeps coming back regularly just to see her and feel her energy. Talented people will shine no matter what, with good subtitles or with a help of excellent interpreters.
The highlight of my career was interpreting for Koffi Annan at YPO EDGE conference in Dubai. But one of my most memorable job in my early days was interpreting for Mayor Futoshi Toba of Rikuzen-Takata in 2016. It was only a few years after the Tsunami of 2011 and almost all of the city has been wiped out by Tsunami and he spoke about the resilience of his people, how they joined forces to rebuild the city, where everyone had lost family members, including himself as he lost his wife. And how the city never forgets about the forces of nature and share their experience to the new generation in hopes that there is learnings in such tragedy in case it may strike again.
The panel was shared with some European and Oceanian delegates and while I interpreted his story, I was shaking with emotion, and other panellists had tears in their eyes. After the session there were much sharing and shaking of hands and bowing. In these cases the speaker should be speaking from his heart in Japanese and not thinking how to phrase the sentence or if he is using the correct words, leave that to the interpreter and perhaps that is how we build bridges around the world.
