When it came to Japanese Cartography, we found out that Japan lagged behind a bit. So what about other things, like English Language Proficiency? Education First recently released their report on worldwide English language proficiency, showing some interesting results. Instead of talking about the Japanese language today, I thought it would be interesting to talk about the English language in Japan (and the rest of the world). How does Japan compare? Let’s find out.

How They Tested “English Proficiency”

One of the main challenges faced was that there’s not “standard” way across every country to test English Proficiency. They used data from two million adults who took free English tests over a three year period. They think (and generally I agree with them) that over time and with enough data, these tests should give a fairly accurate depiction of a country’s English abilities. If you look at the countries (and read through their study) I think this generally holds true and seems accurate enough (at least when it comes to comparing countries with each other).

One thing to note is that they tested adults. They wanted to see how good the adult population was at English (as in, people who have gone through the standard education programs). This also makes sense to me, because then this way it helps to show how the English education program as a whole works out, rather than testing people who are in middle school vs high school (where the English gap would be a lot bigger).

Where Japan Stands

One thing to take into  consideration is the test itself. I couldn’t see anything that specified what the test actually tested, but I think it’s safe to assume it wasn’t an oral test, meaning depending on what a school system studied, people are going to do better on the test (or worse on the test). The Japanese system, for example, really focuses on reading and text-based things. Speaking, overall, isn’t that important, which is one of the reasons why it’s so hard for Japanese people to speak / understand English, even though their reading / writing is pretty good.

Overall, compared to the other countries tested, Japan was number 14 out of the 44 listed. Not too shabby.

Click for bigger view (or download the study, link at the top of this post)

As you can see, Europe did pretty well on these tests, which makes sense. Most of the top countries, apparently, require English as your first second language, and of course English is pretty widely spoken in Europe. Most of Europe has had English as a part of their education curriculum since the 1980s, as well, meaning there’s been a chance for enough people to get through the entire program, increasing the number of adults who can do English overall.

Japan has also has had an English language program for a long time (definitely since the 80s, probably before that a bit too, but I’m not absolutely sure), though they’re 14 on the chart. South Korea, Hong Kong, and Malaysia are the two Asian places ahead of Japan (and Malaysia is the only Asian country in the top 10, and the only one with a “high proficiency” rating). China has a “Low Proficiency” rating, but this will definitely change as more people get through the English education program. English learning in China has hit a boom in recent years, so all it’ll take is some time for China to get into the Moderate Proficiency, and then maybe into high.

If you changed the test to be an oral test, I think these numbers would change drastically, though. Japan would probably go down to a low proficiency score (along with many other places as well).

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of English education in Japan (not English education in general, but rather how it’s done). Everything feels so mechanical and old school, and so much (if not all of) the focus is on preparing to take tests that for some reason decide your entire future.

So where did you think Japan stood in English proficiency compared to the rest of the world? I would have thought a bit lower, though apparently I’m a bit sarcastic when it comes to Japan and their English education programs. Also, take a look at the entire study if you’re interested. Lots of cool tidbits of information on English being learned throughout the world, what’s worked for certain countries, and why people are learning English. For those things, at least, I thought it was pretty interesting.

Japan has its share of rivals in the world, but how many of you know about Japan’s greatest enemy – the tiny country of Montenegro? Did you know that Japan and Montenegro were at war for 100 years, from 1905-2006? It’s true. Despite losing its army after World War 2 and getting occupied by the US, somehow this 100 year war slipped under the radar of most of the world. How did this happen? Read on to find out.

The Russo-Japanese War

If you’re a history buff or a Japan fanatic, you probably already know all about the Russo-Japanese War. If not, let me get you up to speed: The name of the game at the beginning of the 20th century was imperialism. Every world power at the time had vast empires, conquering other countries. Japan and Russia wanted to be recognized as world powers too, so they decided to expand their empires. Unfortunately, both countries wanted the same territory – Korea and part of China.

Most of the world assumed that Russia was going to win because it had more troops than Japan and more battle experience. However, as the war unfolded Japan won more and more battles. The defining moment of the war was the long and arduous battle over Port Arthur, a strategic Russian port in northeastern China. Initially, the Japanese attempted to block the port entirely with sunken ships, but the situation escalated to a full out siege when the Russians easily overcame the Japanese blockade. After a 6-month Japanese siege of Port Arthur, a Russian general unexpectedly surrendered. In a year, Japan had won. A treaty was signed, Japan was named the victor and received territory from the losers.

Japan’s victory was a huge deal. It was a huge victory for a non-European country at a time when Europe ruled the world. Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese war meant that it had made it as a world power, and that the goals of the Meiji Restoration to modernize and westernize had finally been realized.

The Russian people were pretty upset that the motherland had been defeated by such a small country and later experienced a revolution at home. The Tsar (king) of Russia was overthrown, and a new government was set up, making countries and alliances and other things nice and confusing.

Montenegro

Even if you already knew all that and are a Japanese history know-it-all who can name every Japanese emperor, I bet you didn’t know this: one country involved in the war technically stayed at war with Japan for 100 years – Montenegro.

The sweet two-headed bird flag of current-day Montenegro

Montenegro is a tiny Eastern European country that hangs out next to Serbia and Albania, a little east of Italy. Now back in the day, at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, Montenegro allied with Russia because Russia had helped out Montenegro with a war a few years earlier. This alliance was really more for moral support than actual military support, as Montenegro is thousands of miles away from Japan, and because of its size, couldn’t really provide that many troops in the first place.

The not-so massive country of Montenegro on a map

The Russo-Japanese war came and went, and Japan won. Somehow though, the proper paperwork didn’t get filled out and when Japan and Russia signed a peace treaty, everybody forgot about poor Montenegro. To make things worse, Montenegro basically turned into five or six different countries in the next hundred years, turning into a kingdom, being absorbed into Yugoslavia, and finally gaining its independence. During all that time, paperwork got shuffled around and more important things were on people’s minds – little things like the World Wars, the Cold War, and Montenegro’s fight for independence.

Peace at Last

It wasn’t till 2006 that Montenegro gained it independence, and Japan normalized relations with the country. An ambassador was sent from Japan, and a formal peace treaty was signed. Now, Japan and Montenegro are best buds. The war of over 100 years is finally over, and there are a whole 11 Japanese people living in Montenegro. Japan even has a fairly substantial trade relationship with Montenegro – Japan exports over a million yen (less than $10,000) worth of goods to Montenegro every year, and there are even Japanese companies there. Japan also helps out the newly-independent Montenegro through aid – giving over 500 million yen to the country (around $5 million).

The great century-long war is probably not even a footnote in most history books, but I think it’s a pretty interesting little tidbit of knowledge. You can impress your friends with your awesome historical knowledge and like, show it off at parties, right? (Or at least write a Tofugu post about it.)

P.S.: Extra credit if you can name all the Japanese emperors from Jimmu to Akihito (no looking at Wikipedia you big nerd!).

P.P.S. If you’re not one of the 11 Japanese people living in Montenegro right now, you should Like Tofugu on Facebook

All that being said, that’s only “Western” people we’re talking about. Japan was pretty xenophobic until the 1800′s, and they didn’t “get out” much. You could say that about all the Asian countries hanging about back then. It wasn’t until the 1600′s that Japan “saw the world for the first time” (in map form)… and boy did it look beautiful.

Matteo Ricci: Missionary and Map Maker

Forgive me for taking us to China for a bit. This isn’t a blog about China, but this is where the story starts.

Matteo Ricci (pictured above) was born in Italy in 1552. He wanted to become a missionary in India, but instead was dispatched to China where he arrived in 1582. He was in a Portuguese trading post (Macau), where none of the other Missionaries (or anyone, really) had to learn any Chinese. Because he was forward thinking, or bored, or something inbetween, he became one of the first Westerners to be able to read Chinese script. He and another guy, Ruggieri (one of the only other Missionaries who studied Chinese) then went around mainland China to do their missionary duties.

Apparently, he was already pretty skilled at map making, and was invited to stay in Zhaoqing (an area of China), where in 1584 he Ricci composed the first European-style map in Chinese. The original map does not survive, but there are many copies, some of which eventually made it to Japan (and are there to this day).

The Kunyu Wanguo Quantu

Click the map for a bigger version, or click here for huge version

The Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (坤輿萬國全圖), which means “A Map of the Myriad Countries of the World” was originally created in 1584 (by Ricci, of course), and had other editions created after. The above image is the third revision (created in 1602). This map is very large (1.5m by 3.66m), and of course shows China/Asia as the center of the world (European maps of the time normally showed Europe as being in the center). Overall, this map was pretty good, I’d say.

It made its way to Japan eventually, though it never really took hold like it did in China (at least not right away). Japan had its own World maps, though, and a lot of the information was said to have come from Ricci’s maps.

The First Japanese Map Of The World

Although the Kunyu Wnguo Quantu was making its rounds, it was largely a Chinese thing, and didn’t become incredibly popular until it was copied later on by Nagakubo (keep reading). One of the first Japanese world maps in Japan was actually a Buddhist map, which means all kinds of interesting things. Before we look at that, though, let’s take a look at Japanese Buddhist “World” Maps before they started incorporating the other countries of the world. These maps, called nansenbusho, consisted of only three countries: China, India, and Japan.

I wouldn’t say this map would be particularly useful for someone trying to find any of these countries, but China is in the Northeastern section, India makes up the inverted triangle shape at the bottom, and Japan is an island off to the East. These maps centered on the Buddhist world, and have a lot of Buddhist landmarks. The whirlpool in the middle, for example, is the center of the universe, which is a lake where Queen Maya gave birth to the Buddha.

This new map, printed in 1710 (considerably after Ricci’s map) is the first nansenbushu that contained the rest of the world. It’s thought that Ricci’s map had made some circulation by this time, and the author of this map heard about the rest of the world enough to make some fun guesses. Then again, the map with only India, China, and Japan wasn’t particularly accurate from a cartographic standpoint, so I guess I shouldn’t be expecting that much.

Yes, this is a map of the world – See a zoomable version of this map here

This new map, called “Nansenbushu bankoku Shoka no zu” is thought to be the first Japanese map to depict the rest of the world (outside of the three main Buddhist Countries at the time). Of course, you have to remember this is a Buddhist map, meaning things are mapped by religious significance (rather than actual accuracy), meaning India and China get a big portion of the map… most of it, in fact.

You can see India because of the peninsula at the bottom. China and Japan get a pretty big piece of the pie as well. In fact, this map is mostly made up of the three countries, so where is the rest of the world?

Europe is in the top left corner – as you can see, mostly just place names are written in – there’s nothing there of any (religious) importance, it’s just kind of up there, consisting of a bunch of islands. Countries like England, Holland, Hungary, Italy, France, and others are represented.

Supposedly Africa, this small island off to the West is labeled as the “Kingdom of Western Women.” Awesome.

In the top right, it also seems as though they have Alaska and the Aelutian land bridge, which means even the Americas got some map cred. Obviously this is the most accurate part of the map – Alaska is still just a blank sheet of ice with mountains (just kidding people from Alaska).

I think this particular map is pretty awesome – it shows how the importance of certain things really can dictate how a map is drawn out. Obviously a big part is a lack of knowledge at the time of how other countries are laid out, but you can definitely see what’s important on this map (Buddhism) and what’s not (everything else). The scale of this map really wasn’t to scale in terms of land mass. Instead, it was to scale in terms of religious importance. I think India wins in this one. That’s where Buddha was born, after all.

Of course, maps like this couldn’t go on forever… not with Ricci’s maps making its rounds since the early 1600s. Eventually, someone made a world map for Japan that gained a lot of traction.

Nagakubo Sekisui’s Revised World Map

I think it’s fairly reasonable to assume that the copies of Ricci’s maps (which did make it to Japan) were some of the first good world maps that Japan had ever seen. Considering how closed off Japan was to the rest of the world at the time, a map of the world in a language that some Japanese people could read (at least better than English, or some other European language) must have been really interesting. Still, Ricci’s maps weren’t necessarily widely distributed, meaning the world was probably a mystery to a lot of people (though by this time people knew that other countries besides India, China, and Japan existed, of course).

Then along came Nagakubo Sekisui. He took Ricci’s map and copied it in woodblock print form. He didn’t just copy maps for a living (we’ll cover that in a sec), but I’d say he did a good job on this one. He made some revisions to the map, redrew it, and added katakana to his copy to make it more readable.

Zoom in and out of this map – I’d recommend full screen mode. Also viewable here

This map is known as the “Revised and Complete World Map” which supposedly came out in 1785. If you compare it to the original (Ricci’s) you can see there’s a bit more detail, especially in and around Asia. The main difference is the art style (definitely more Japanese/Asian) as well as the fact that it’s readable in Japanese, which is pretty cool.

Some interesting things about this map (as well as Ricci’s map):

• Florida is the “Land of flowers”
• The Sahara Desert seems to have a lot more water than I imagine it, at least
• “Sea of Japan” is omitted in this one, even though it’s in Ricci’s original

And I’m sure there are a ton of other interesting things in there, just waiting to be discovered. I’m guessing (someone will have to let me know) that a lot of the translations on this map come from Italian, which is a language I do not speak, though a lot of the katakana on this map definitely are close enough to the English versions where you can figure them out. イタリア is still イタリア, anyways.

The really interesting thing to me is that this is considered to be one of the first mainstream world maps in Japan. It was 1785 for goodness sakes! That’s almost 200 years after Ricci made his world maps, which were pretty darn good. I’m guessing this was mostly caused by how closed off Japan was from the rest of the world… but still, 1785 wasn’t that long ago if you think about it!

“Modern” Maps Of Japan

The guy who did the revised world map (Nagakubo Sekisui) also did some of the first “good” maps of Japan (he wasn’t only a copycat). He was the first Japanese map maker to use “geographical coordinates.” Seems like something you’d want to do, though I’m no map maker. As you can see in the map above, Hokkaido (Ezo, back then) was omitted from this map, apparently because this area wasn’t totally known yet. It’s Japanese frontier country, after all. You can find a lot of his works here, which are pretty nice, if you’re into that kind of thing (talking about maps, you sicko).

There was another (arguably much better) map-maker in town at around the same time, though, who’s name was Ino Tadataka, though he wasn’t as well known for quite a while (now he’s like the cartographer of Japanese history books). Tadataka was hired by the Shogun himself to make a map of Japan. He spent the last 17 years of his life working on this map (which sadly, he didn’t live to see finished). He supposedly spent 3,736 days taking measurements, traveling nearly 35,000 kilometers, working to finish a 1:216,000 map of the entire coastline of Japan. He died in 1818, but his team finished it 1821.

Part of his map – the 3d and 2d mix is pretty interesting, I think

The maps by Nagakubo were widely distributed and used up until the 1860s, even though they weren’t as good as Ino’s. Ino’s maps were kept secret by the Shogun for a while, plus they came out much later (1821 versus 1785). Ino’s maps were of much higher quality, though (and quality is king, I’d say), and were used for much longer (as late as 1924) due to their incredible accuracy (much of it accurate to 1/1000 of a degree!). Ino also worked on maps of Hokkaido, as well. He even has a statue to commemorate his map making skillz.

Into The Future

Of course, the future has brought us an unprecedented level of map accuracy. With satellite images, technology, yadda yadda, maps are pretty good. One of my favorite “new” map features is of course Google Street View. Not only can you see a top down view of Japan, but you can get right down into almost any street, and see a 360 degree picture of that particular part of that particular street. If someone told me you’ll be able to do that ten years ago, I’d probably have thought they were crazy.

Makes me wonder, though – Did people back then think “this map is as good as it gets!” just like I’m doing with maps right now? I imagine there are some things that can be done, like 3D rendering of land height / etc., but what else is there to do? I suppose there’s a lot of crowdsourced options, where people add in tons of information about local spots, which would help people find more interesting things, but where do you go from there?

Anyways, as you can see, Japan has come a long way in terms of how they see the world and how they see themselves (from a map-perspective, anyways). I kind of miss the old style maps – they definitely were as artistic as they were useful (or just artistic, in some cases). Maps nowadays are way more useful, but they lack the same style and feeling that old maps had. I guess that’s because maps aren’t really hand drawn anymore. Those were the days, eh?