Japan takes so long to teach kids to read that shows need subtitles in Japanese

Japanese: the language that needs subtitles for its own children

In 1975, the anime series Grendizer displayed a title in kanji that, to be understood by Japanese children, required a "subtitling" in hiragana. The image, rescued from a forum, reflects a paradox: a society that spends years learning a writing system its own native speakers don't master until adolescence. It's not a meme, it's a fact: Japanese children can't read fully until age 10-12, according to educational studies, because they need to memorize thousands of Chinese characters (kanji) plus two phonetic syllabaries. Meanwhile, in Spain, a 7-year-old already reads without help. The question that arises: does it make sense to keep a writing system that takes a decade of study to become functional?

Three systems, one madness

Written Japanese combines three scripts: hiragana (for native words), katakana (for loanwords) and kanji (Chinese ideograms). The first two are syllabaries of about 50 characters each, learnable in months. But kanji requires knowing between 4,000 and 5,000 characters to read a newspaper. Children use furigana (small hiragana characters above the kanji) in books until they memorize the symbols. As in the Grendizer title: the kanji appeared with its phonetic reading above it. A solution some call "zascandil" for its inefficiency.

The comparison with China is no better: Mandarin also uses characters, though without auxiliary syllabaries, which makes learning even longer. Korea, on the other hand, abandoned Chinese characters for hangul, a phonetic alphabet learned in days. The Japanese, however, keep kanji out of tradition and to reduce ambiguity: the language has many homophones, and characters help distinguish meanings. "Without kanji, it would be chaos," some argue; "it's a cultural ballast," others reply.

The cost of complexity

The time devoted to literacy in Japan is disproportionate. While a Spaniard masters spelling in a few years, a Japanese person spends their childhood memorizing strokes. Some argue that this effort doesn't translate into better reading skills, but into a barrier to universal literacy. In fact, the functional illiteracy rate in Japan is not low, although official data hide it. The system also fosters elitism: those who don't master kanji are excluded from certain circles.

At the opposite pole, the simplicity of Spanish and Korean hangul shows that you can have simple writing without losing expressive richness. "Spanish being so easy..." one commenter quips, contrasting it with the complexity of Japanese. Others point out that Spanish has its own quirks, like verb conjugations that drive Japanese speakers crazy. But the underlying question is whether tradition justifies keeping a system that slows down learning.

The future of writing

Technology could solve the problem: e-readers and AIs already offer automatic phonetic transcription. Some predict that in a few years "only 10% will learn more than a 100-word vocabulary." But cultural resistance is fierce. Meanwhile, on Japanese keyboards, sounds are typed in hiragana and the software converts them to kanji, a process foreigners see as a digital tongue-twister.

The final question: is kanji a mark of identity or a drag? The debate has no easy answer, but the image of the child watching Grendizer with subtitles in his own language remains the best metaphor for a system that, in trying so hard to be profound, became peine.

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