On learning Japanese

Mission in Japan meant years of study to master a language that even the Japanese consider difficult to learn

By Fr. Gerald Curry, S.F.M.
June 2007

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It was mid-October 1961. We were approaching the end of a 15-day journey by ship across the Pacific Ocean on our way to Japan and for the first time the sound of the Japanese language and the music of Japan could be heard on the radio. How strange was the music and incomprehensible the language. Scarboro Father Ed Geier was returning to Japan and Fr. John Trainor and I were going there for the first time. The next day the Japanese Islands came into sight and our tiny freighter entered Tokyo Bay. The day after our arrival John (Jake) and I began language school.

The school was run by Franciscan missionaries. They were joined by Japanese teachers to ensure that we learned most of our language from native speakers. We would also learn from every Japanese we met, especially the young who were eager to meet people from other countries and to learn English from them. Also the Japanese who worked at Scarboro Missions' central house in Tokyo where we lived would be most helpful and encouraging.

A one of a kind language

As Japan is an island nation, Japanese is a one of a kind language unrelated to any other and totally unfamiliar to anyone other than the Japanese people themselves. In the sixth century, Japanese scholars went to China and brought the written Chinese language back to Japan, adapting it to the script and sounds of their own language. Today the official Japanese language consists of more than 2,400 basic Chinese characters (kanji) and to these symbols both a Chinese and a Japanese sound is applied. These are used with two other Japanese phonetic alphabets (kana) each with 47 symbols and each having their own distinctive sounds. One kana alphabet is used to render foreign words into Japanese and the other is used for native words. It should also be noted that in different districts people speak their own dialect. Indeed even the Japanese themselves complain about the complexity of their language.

Language study began at 9:00 a.m. on the day after our arrival. We joined a class with five other missionaries from the US, Ireland and Australia. The average age was 25 years and we were raring to get started.

Our first sentence, "This is a book," was written in Japanese and totally ncomprehensible. Underneath, written in the English alphabet, were the sounds of the Japanese words. These sounds were repeated by our teacher several times and were also incomprehensible. "Kore wa hon desu" was pronounced ko/re wa hon de/su. So began this new and alien experience.

We would go on to take in with our eyes and repeat after our teachers hundreds of simple sentences over and over again. In the beginning we instantly forgot them but as time went on we were able to repeat them and with the proper pitch and tone. All of this with the encouragement and I am sure sometimes to the amusement of our teachers and fellow students. We soon learned that humility and a good sense of humour would be essential if we were ever going to converse in this language.

From November to June of that first study year, our days went from 9:00 a.m. until noon when we returned home, five days a week. After lunch and a short rest we put in five to six hours of study. As time went on the sentences got longer, pronouns and adjectives, verbs and adverbs were added, tenses changed, we learned to ask questions, to tell the time and to count. We practiced the symbols and sounds of the kana alphabets and the Chinese and Japanese sounds of some of the simpler kanji.

Essential to learning Chinese and Japanese is a good ear, as proper tone and pitch enables the listener to understand what has been spoken. In Chinese the same sound and meaning always accompanies the same kanji (symbol). In Japanese the context can change the sound and meaning of the kanji. Another twist we had to get used to was that the verb always came at the end of the sentence.

To add to the complexity was the requirement to use a more polite form of Japanese when speaking to, or even about, people who were our superiors or considered above us in any way. The words "I" or "you" or "we" for example were different when spoken among friends than when spoken in situations that called for the so-called honorific language. As well, the honorific was used at the beginning and at the end of certain sentences rendering them more polite. This way of speaking was best learned from the women teachers, as from childhood they had to use the honorific more often than men simply because they were women.

As the weeks and months passed, the language became less strange. The ability to understand a sentence came quicker than the ability to speak the sentence. Our earlier conversations were filled with the word "wa/ka/ri/ma/sen," (I don't understand) followed by a plea to repeat what was said and more slowly.

After our first eight months of language school we were posted for the summer to parishes in the southern island of Kyushu. Nagasaki, where St. Francis Xavier had entered Japan, was not too far away so we had a chance to visit there several times. Xavier referred to Japanese as the "language of the devil" and we agreed at least that it was a devil of a language.

During the summer we befriended many Japanese, especially the young. We went swimming and hiking with them, practicing our Japanese and teaching them English, which they were eager to learn. We experienced the dignity and friendliness of the people and the beauty of the Japanese islands.

Year two

Our second year was very different than our first. We had a private tutor at home, we were taught one on one, and the language became more difficult because of the introduction of more of the written Chinese symbols, which we learned to read as well as to write.

Every day at 9:00 a.m. our tutor Mr. Oshima (meaning the honourable Mr. Island) would arrive eager to drill us and indeed grill us. Jake and I called him "the little man" (though not to his face of course), as indeed he was short in stature. He was truly a good teacher, patient and encouraging and quite fluent in English, which he had learned as a young man when he served as an interpreter to the American military based at US headquarters in Tokyo.

One morning I confessed to Mr. Oshima that I felt like I had hit a wall with my language study, that I was getting nowhere, in fact getting worse instead of better. He replied that I must not give up, that I would wake up one morning and the language would be there. From then on it would be a matter of building on a solid foundation. He told me that we had not learned a dead language but a living one, spoken around us, and that we would learn more every day in every situation.

After a full year of being tutored by Mr. Oshima, language school was over. Jake and I were assigned to Scarboro parishes in the diocese of Nagoya along the east coast of central Japan. Our linguistic skills developed as we entered into everyday life among the Japanese. Language school had been a controlled and sheltered environment, now it was time, as the young of today say, to get real.

It took me at least three more years to be spontaneous in giving the Sunday homily in Japanese. Up until then I would compose it in English, translate it into Japanese and then read it at Mass. Along the way I studied some psychology and learned the words and phrases of this discipline in Japanese using them when needed in my work.

I believe the Japanese people appreciated our efforts to learn their language. When we spoke with strangers for the first time, they expressed surprise and delight that we spoke Japanese as they knew how difficult it was to learn. Equally important as the language was our attitude towards the people and their culture. Did we approach them with respect and dignity? Were we loving and compassionate, interested in them as persons and in their needs and aspirations? The Japanese soon knew intuitively when these qualities were present. This "language of the heart" was more important to them than any linguistic fluency we may have attained.

At the end of 1974 I left Japan, called home to work as editor of Scarboro Missions magazine. I look back with respect for the Japanese and with a deep sense of thanksgiving for all that I received in Nihon, the Land of the Rising Sun.

After returning to Canada, Fr. Gerald Curry served in Society leadership and as editor of Scarboro Missions magazine-a position he held for 17 years. He is now retired and living in Cape Breton.

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