At the risk of over-generalizing, I think if you are born and live in Japan, you don't need any language other than Japanese. That might be why the ordinary Japanese are poor at English. On the other hand, the number of non-Japanese who can have a good command of Japanese is only a few. The grammar of Japanese is quite unique, which has three kinds of letters like "hiragana", "katakana" and "kanji". The first two types have about 50 letters at most respectively, but "kanji" has a few dozen thousand letters, though 1000 letters are enough in daily life. I believe that there is no other language that has as complicated and cumbersome grammar as Japanese.
Lots of misunderstanding between Japan and other countries have been repeated so far. Even now it's through the media that the ordinary Japanese get information on outside of Japan. If the media was biased, Japanese people would be easily brainwashed.
Now, however, the situation has completely changed. I don't need the Japanese media to get information from outside of Japan. I can directly read a variety of news items on the web of the foreign news media. The Japanese who understand English can have more information than the other Japanese people. I feel that I'm lucky to have learned and been learning English so far.
英語がわかると言うこと
日本人に生まれ、日本で暮らすとき、日本語さえわかれば他の言語を覚える必要は無い。 これが原因だろうか、日本人は一般に英語が苦手である。また、日本語を話す外国人は多くない。日本語の文法体系はかなり特殊であるし、文字は３種類、うち２つは５０個程度の文字数だが、もう一種は数万に及ぶ。日常で使うには１０００も有れば十分だが。これほど厄介な言語はそうはないと思う。
従って、日本と海外の情報交換はこれまでの歴史を振り返っても誤解が多かった。日本人が海外で起こった事件に接するのは日本のメディアを通してだった。メディアがいい加減な根拠のない報道をすれば、それが日本人の知識となっていた。
が、今は違う。情報はメディアを通さずとも伝わってくる。英語がわかると言うことは、そうでない人々に比べて圧倒的に知識が増える。英語を理解しない人にはわからないかもしれないが、今まで英語の勉強をしてきてそう思う。
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