The Japanese have a genius for taking things to extremes. Just think: while the rest of the world’s gardeners are content to prune trees, the Japanese invent Bonsai. Extreme complication extends to every part of the cultural frame, from what slippers you wear to the toilet (blue for men, pink for women, with instructions in two languages on the toe) to how, always assuming one can find a seat, one sits in the metro. Although in theory the vocabulary and grammar is simple, language use is subtle and difficult to comprehend.

Something as simple as ordering a beer or cinema ticket, uses one of three different counting systems (Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic) and five supplementary counters: three beers is “Mittsu biru” whereas three tickets is “san-mai kitte”. Different counters are used for flat things (ichi-mai) books and magazines, (is-satsu), floors (ik-kai), long objects (ip-pon), round things (hitostu, futatsu, mittsu), and variations for animals and people depending on circumstance… I’ll bet engineers were relieved when the Meiji restoration adopted Arabic numerals.

Most cultures are pleased when they learn to write with one script. Japanese uses four: Kanji, derived from Chinese ideograms; Hiragana for Japanese words that can’t be written in Kanji; Katakana for borrow words like personal computer or soccer, and Romanji (Roman alphabet) because it looks cool on a t-shirt, mission statement, or poster. So an advert for the latest cosmetic might require the consumer to recognize and decipher four different scripts, and the factory might have “Bringing enjoyment to clean hair” plastered on the side of the building. (Almost by definition, mission statements are often facile, in Janglish, they are often ever so slightly wrong). Despite a claimed literacy rate of over 98%, reading isn’t easy, given that you need to be able to recognize 2,143 Kanji (in standard Japanese); Hiragana and Katakana might represent the same sounds, but each has 46 symbols of which 20 can be further modified in one of two ways to represent ‘p’ or ‘b’ sounds; makes Romanji with a mere 26 letters look positively depauperate. It’s all wonderfully distinctive, but my neighbour’s son, age 12, cannot read the back of a cereal packet.

The spoken word ought to be simpler. It is not. Wikipedia lists fourteen different personal pronouns for ‘I’ or ‘me’; which gets used depends on the relative status of the speaker and listener as well as the circumstance. The implications of word choice are instantly recognizable to native speakers and incomprehensible to most Gaijin. Male and female speech differ in the use of pronouns, adjectives and tone. Although the Emperor Akhito’s speech after the Tohoku was incredibly formal in comparison with ordinary conversation, it is perhaps a measure of how much has changed in the last sixty years that most Japanese at least understood what he was saying. Hirohito’s surrender speech that wasn’t was delivered in formal court language and was reported to be incomprehensible to most of the population.

Language is the framework that supports and nurtures culture, and one result of the complexity of Nihongo is that few outsiders, not just westerners, can really appreciate the implications of Japanese language and idiom. Even the best intentioned and dedicated of Nipponophiles cannot recognize and understand all the complexities and implications of ordinary speech and social interaction. Outsiders like us are linguistically and culturally dyslexic.

For the Japanese, the language is both a barrier and defense against the rest of the world; I think the language also heightens a sense of national and cultural exclusivity. But barriers, like a Berlin wall, work in two directions; the opaque nature of the language not only retains and identifies, it also excludes, restricts and controls. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view.