Obama Becomes Japan’s English Teacher

The New York Times, by MIKI TANIKAWA, Published: October 11, 2009

A CD of President Barack Obama's inaugural speech has sold a half million copies in Japan, leading publishers to flood the market with over a dozen language-learning titles centered on his oratory. (Miki Tanikawa)

TOKYO — When Utako Sakai was changing the background music in her beauty parlor recently, she did not opt for the classical piano pieces she usually chose.

Instead, she picked her favorite CD: “President Obama’s Inaugural Address,” released by Asahi Press, a Japanese publisher of language books. She says the speech lifts her spirits and helps her to learn English all at once.

“All our customers love it,” said Ms. Sakai, who is based in Ayase City, in Kanagawa Prefecture, outside Tokyo.

The speech CD and its accompanying book have been a resounding success, selling 200,000 copies since its release in January. A compilation of President Barack Obama’s speeches has done even better, selling half a million copies since November, solidifying his role as Japan’s English teacher.

Publishers have since flooded the market with over a dozen language-learning titles, including “Speech Training: Learning to Deliver English Speech, Obama Style”; “Learn English Grammar From Obama”; and “Yes, I Can With Obama: 40 Magical English Phrases From Presidential E-mails.”

Asahi Press followed up its inauguration book and CD with a recording of Mr. Obama’s “World Without Nuclear Weapons” speech, also in book and CD form, given in Prague in April.

The publishers are trying to tap into a foreign-language teaching industry that the Yano Search Institute said was valued at ¥767 billion, or $8.7 billion, in 2008. The figure includes the cost of books, CDs, dictionaries, e-learning programs, standardized English tests, and the cost of private language lessons. The institute, in Tokyo, says the majority of the spending is aimed at learning English.

Most Japanese people, including those studying English, would have difficulty comprehending a speech given by a native English speaker. But “Mr. Obama’s English is easy to understand because he pronounces words clearly and speaks at a relatively slow clip,” said Professor Tadaharu Nikaido, a communication specialist here. “Movies tend to be the most difficult for Japanese, especially when actors mumble their words.”

Mr. Obama sets his range of vocabulary wide enough to accommodate the highly educated and the less educated, Professor Nikaido added, and at the lower end, it sometimes comes within the range of non-native speakers’ comprehension.

But there are probably a large number of buyers who do not really possess the basic English skills to understand his speech, said Yuzo Yamamoto, an editor at Asahi Press. Since the sales took off, he has received postcards from readers saying they had been touched by Mr. Obama’s speeches, but “those same people have said they were moved even though they didn’t understand English well,” he said. “Some even said the only phrase they caught was, ‘Yes, we can.’ They said they were in tears nonetheless.”

Mr. Yamamoto said there was a sincerity about Mr. Obama’s speaking style that listeners could perceive phonetically, combined with a delivery that was almost musical.

“That seems to result in sensation, the kind of which you get from listening to good music,” he said.

Other observers say that Japanese buyers probably feel as though they understand his speeches just from the nonverbal cues.

“The audience in the background helped too,” Professor Nikaido said. “The audience’s echo in the background works the same way as, say, laugh sound effects inserted in TV comedies.”

That may explain why Ms. Sakai, the beautician, and her customers were so enthralled by Mr. Obama. Ms. Sakai describes her English skills as less than perfect and says she relies on others for translation when she travels overseas. But when she hears Mr. Obama talk, she feels perfectly at ease.

“I feel as though I am not Japanese,” she says, because she is able to understand the English speech so well.

The fervor over Obama-speak, some say, reflects other aspects of Japan’s changing society. Among the public, there is now a longing for leaders with a communication style that is more effective, dynamic and inspiring, something not prevalent in the political culture here, they say.

Since late last year, economic recession has only deepened with no end in sight, and hope has been difficult to find. “There is a sense, why isn’t there an Obama in Japan who can raise people’s spirits,” Mr. Yamamoto said. This year, as the Obama books were beginning to boom, the prime minister then, Taro Aso, was making a series of political gaffes, Mr. Yamamoto noted. They included misreading kanji, the Japanese characters, in public.

The Obama speech phenomenon peaked in the spring, observers say, and has given way to more books and magazines that focus on how Mr. Obama’s communication skills might be adopted in Japan for business and political purposes.

Professor Nikaido himself has recently published a book called “Creating an Audience Frenzy: Learning From Obama’s Strategic Oratory.” At least half a dozen books and magazine covers of this kind have appeared in the past several months.

John R. Harris, a Canadian speechwriter who is based in Chiba, a Tokyo suburb, and who has worked with Japanese politicians, says he knows a good deal about the dire straits of political communication in Japan. The art is virtually nonexistent and is only beginning to be discovered, he said.

“Japan has not been serious about communication,” he said. “In a Japanese company or political party or anyplace where Japanese come together as a group, the process is consensus-forming, and the outcome has to be consensus, and the consensus is internal. In that, the audience often gets forgotten.”