Regressing

Not totally off-topic but I would like to keep trace of the news that "All 104 foreign nurses who came to Japan in 2008 with aspirations of working failed the first national examination in February 2009." The culprit is not their medical competence they seem to have aplenty. But kanji, the almighty untouchable glorious sacred you name it Japanese language wealth of Chinese characters. There are less kanji in Japanese than in Chinese, but yet enough to occupy a huge chunk of time of compulsory education. Relying more and more on computers and keyboard input has a tremendous impact on kanji competence, mostly the writing of these, but as with video game impact on society, it is a tabou to raise the hypothesis that despite a touted +98% national literacy rate, a proportion of Japanese may not be immune to reading incompetence in daily life. It will take time, just like aids, just like anything foreign to be discovered. The strain that kanji pushes onto modern life is terrific. And the point is not to get rid of them, but make reading accessible for the sake of quicker meaning understanding. Newspapers, the popular kind, have been using larger fonts over the years to put less strain on the growing older eyes of readers. But those readers are assumed to suffer sight problems, not deciphering limitations. Except for the exceptional kanji rare or tricky enough that requires reading help in finer scripting, everything is based on the assumed literacy of the many. I must reckon myself that heavy use of computers and on-screen reading has taken a terrible toll on my competence to write kanji, not so much writing but remembering in the mind how a kanji looks like. I feel compassionate with foreign nurses who would be anyway competent reading and transmitting information otherwise.

"However, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Japanese Nursing Association appear reluctant to change the exam. They believe the nurses should gain Japanese proficiency to the level where they can pass on patient details and work-related matters to coworkers."

The Japanese Nursing Association looks much like you WWII veteran associations with a lifelong free pass to Yasukuni shrine. This attitude that bodes nothing good to the society at large tells a story the majority don't want to hear about.