Half-native Mikitani speaks out

There is more comment on today's weather forecast than analysis of the meaning of what people in the news say. You tend to get used to the daily half-anesthetic state of no thinking beside the basics of what's coming next in the two hours.

I can't get rid of the anglicization stuff. It is not a bad idea, but where does it start to prove awkward, on the verge of stupidity. I found part of the answer in an interview of Rakuten CEO Mikitani over Toyo Keizai Online.

Somewhere in the course of the interview, Mr. Mikitani speaks of himself of being "half-native". That's when I would have called the shrink. Is the intention to have all the staff (or only the top brass as you can't, as usual, make a sense of all the vague and contradictory reports of the press) turn "a quarter", "a half" or "fully" native?

But what is "native"? I for one will never be native of any of my foreign languages I use for getting money, paying the rent or more. So is it a matter of being "fluent", with all the previous categories, "half", "quarter", fully "quarter and a half"?

There is a majority of the world who do not give a dime about your fluency. On the beach of Coppacabana or the Cote-d'Azur, I assume that ice-cream vendors can fix a deal with whatever nationalities around, flipping with gelato, glace, icecream, the Chinese or Breton equivalent, granted Bretons are a large enough population to learn, hello, thank you, good bye, strawberry, have a nice day and the likes.

As Donald Richie wrote somewhere in his journal, and I try and remember the gist of it, a farmer's wife in poor Sicilia will bog you with 3 English broken words in order to entice you to buy her goat cheeses.

In the previously mentioned interview, the journalist asks :

　——日本人同士で英語を話すと、効率が落ちるのではないかという声もありますが、そうした問題は乗り越えられますか。

There are voices criticizing the need for Japanese staff to have to speak English even among themselves as this may impact efficiency. Can this hurdle be overcome?

　簡単に乗り越えられる。1年後にはまったく問題ないでしょう。

Yes, easily. There won't be any issue left after a year.

I wonder if the journalist asked the basic, priority question : why should Japanese among themselves speak English? Back in the Golden Year of having spent 12 months at Nagoya university with a Japanese government stipend, and a regimen of 6 to 8 hours of intensive courses of Japanese daily that made the verb "progress" a tangible thing, the various nationalities in the classroom quickly settled down to use Japanese among ourselves. In a sense, we rehearsed Japanese during the breaks, we breathed Japanese all the time, except when talking among peers of same native language. It felt awkward, but the feeling very quickly disappeared. Japanese was the lingua franca to overcome the various level of comfort, or the lack of it at English, the international language.

What would be the purpose to have all your staff sharing a common native language to speak another one? Would it be a way to break procrastination at not being even "half-native"? A rule and a mean of continuous training? I am at loss with this although I do understand there might an impact granted many traits of being Japanese be overcome first, that are beyond issues of language, and way much more into matters of hierarchy, shame management, etc.

Mr. Mikitani, and Fast Retailing CEO Mr. Yanai share the same concern they probably discuss in Japanese among themselves, that "Galapagosization" of Japan, the result of the "we-are-unique" mantra deep down ingrained in the fabric, is now feeling acutely dangerous. They have a point. Globalisation is about language as a dynamic activity, the patterns of which are massively of Western marketing orientation. In that sense, wabi-sabi on the world scene at least is meaningless. There's a culture clash here where language is a vehicle, but not the main factor.

You know how the feeling of urgency works here, as in other part of the world. It may go down the gutter until it's too late to adapt, not to catch up.

I see the point of this fear, and English is for sure bound for a renewed excess of craze. The day you see travelers in the subway silently mumbling at silence shadowing with ears plugged, and eyes conveniently focused on the mobile tiny screen, you'll say something is brewing.

There is another startling utterance in Mr. Mitani stance :

日本人が英語をしゃべれるようになれば、海外の人も日本で働きやすくなる。日本人を使うとコストが高いし、労働力が足りなくなるのだから、海外から来てもらうしかない。

When Japanese will be able to speak Japanese, Japan will turn more convenient for foreigner to work in. Employing Japanese is expensive and the workforce is turning scarce so much that there will be no solution but to have them come to Japan from abroad.

So basically, we want foreign workers to come and get paid less than Japanese.

The standard counter argument to my interpretation could be :

- Global refutation : your wrongly interpreted my words (= I didn't mean what I said).

- The local refutation:

1- You don't understand the subtleties of Japanese.
2- This interview was not supposed to leak out of Japan (rare these days).

It is great, great time to go back to the main subject of this blog. Sorry for the readers. And if you teach English, you know where in Tokyo to run to. Nova, come back.