Why do the Japanese suck at English?

Tokyo, Japan

“Shhh! Now on face to respectable great eels life.” How’s that for the first line of an article? I spotted this gem written on a sign in the window of a seafood restaurant in the Hibiya Midtown shopping center in Tokyo recently. I was delighted. I’ve spent twenty-five years in Japan and have always enjoyed a good bit of mangled Japanese English. I had been dismayed of late by an apparent improvement in the quality of English on signs and noticeboards around Tokyo. But this was the old stuff. This was “Engrish.”

Why would a people usually so meticulous about every aspect of life be so seemingly careless about the correct use of a foreign language?

Terrible English on packaging, signs, clothing and shop fronts is hardly a uniquely Japanese phenomenon of course, but it has been elevated into something of an art form here. There are websites devoted to the most amusing examples, where you can find such pearls as a notice in a park telling us to “Keep away from smiling grass;” a bollard labeled “No porking,” a billboard welcoming us to the “Moron Café” and a property company called “Sexy House.”

A particular favorite of mine, not for the degree of error involved, but its brazenness and the ease with which it could have been avoided, was a hotel in the suburb of Monzen Nakacho whose name was writ large on Hollywood Hills size letters on its roof. That the owners of the “Day Nice Hotel” evidently weren’t prepared to spend the five minutes it would have taken to confirm the correct word order before executing what must have been a considerable job is a thing to wonder at. Why would a people usually so meticulous about every aspect of life be so seemingly careless about the correct use of a foreign language?

Someone who has wondered deeply about this is the author and former advertising copyrighter Angus Waycott, who came to Japan in the 1970s and wrote about the succession of dead-end jobs he took on to pay the rent in his delightful memoir Sliding Doors. Japanese English, he wrote:

is not a subdivision of English but a subdivision of Japanese exclusively directed at an uncritical Japanese audience for whom “meaning” has little or no importance. It was the foreignness of the words that made them attractive and gave them power to carry conviction, not their meaning.

Phonology and visual appearance are parts of that attractive foreignness. English is cool and sexy, and has a fresh, modern, occidental sound that appeals particularly to the young. This is most starkly illustrated in Japanese band names, which often feature truly bizarre juxtapositions. Examples include: Bump of Chicken, Marmalade Butcher, Ogre you Asshole (yes, really) and my personal favorite: Flumpool. Admittedly this love of the sound of English did take a hit during lockdown when a theory was postulated that the greater frequency of sibilant sounds increased the risk of catching Covid. 

The visual aspect is probably a reaction to the rather heavy overtones of kanji. Douglas Goldstein wrote an academic paper on the subject for which he interviewed copywriters at Japan’s largest the ad agency Dentsu. They told him that kanji can look a bit “noisy”!and aggressive, and that it “cluttered up the page.” English apparently had a “cleaner feel.” Meaning was almost irrelevant and the Mad Men conceded that English, “was chosen more for its decorative than its communicative function.”

I shave always suspected a cunning subliminal purpose too. Weird English has a weird kind of power, and confers name recognition on unexceptional products. It sounds a bit mad but there may be method in it. Why on earth would I remember the name of an unremarkable business hotel twenty years after I first noticed it? Indeed, I have a strange nostalgic fondness for the Day Nice Hotel. I might stay there one day, just for old time’s sake, making sure to wish the staff a “day nice” as I leave.  

But are we too tolerant? Shouldn’t we feel a sense of proprietorial offense at all this? Is it indeed an example of that egregious modern sin cultural appropriation? English is, after all, the language of Shakespeare, who though he hardly stuck rigidly to the rules of correct grammar and syntax, and wasn’t above inventing words when the need arose, at least always did so beautifully, and with a worthy aim in mind, not just to flog white goods or pot noodles.

I think not. We should rejoice in the endless flexibility and multi-purpose nature of English and take its appropriation as a compliment. After all, Japanese kanji is ritually abused by the tattooed for very similar reasons to those of Japanese signwriters — the look, the exoticness, the cache. How many of those sporting kanji tattoos in the US have the faintest idea what they mean? 

And I have honestly never heard a single Japanese person complain about that. They take it in good part. More of this relaxed, generous, good humored attitude to culture would be a welcome thing in the world today.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.