A thread about Japanese politicians and English. Most of them are not good at English, but a few are - or they say they are. Let’s look at a few. 1/

1. I didn’t know anything about Foreign Minister Motegi’s English proficiency, even though he is alleged to be fluent, so went looking. This is from an FCCJ conference 3 years ago. 2/

Although he starts off w/an English address, he replies in Japanese throughout, although he mostly doesn’t rely on the question to be translated first, which says to me he is actually not that fluent. 3/

So let’s say Magdalena Osumi had shot back at him in English for a clarification during that now infamous Q and A, could he have answered (or dodged around the answer rather) coherently in English? I wonder. 4/

2. Tokyo Governor Koike, who has such an annoying tendency to incorporate tons of imported English words in her speech it’s becoming a running joke. Another FCCJ conf. appearance from 4 years ago. 5/

Her prepared statement is read very cearly (her pronunciation is pretty nice) . She too relies on an interpreter though, and answers in Japanese. (I wonder how her Arabic is, since she graduated from the University of Cairo.) 6/

3. Former Tokyo Governor Masuzoe, who resigned in a really stupid scandal. Another FCCJ conference. He actually answers the Qs in English, makes jokes, etc. This is actual fluency imo. 7/

This English fluency is probably why he still gets attention from the international press, even though politically he’s quite irrelevant now. 8/

4. Environment Minister Koizumi. No FCCJ appearance yet, but here he is at the UN, seemingly quite comfortable making jokes and going off script. More evidence needed of his English. 9/

Last but not least, Defense Minister Kono, again an FCCJ appearance. 10/

Here he is in an interview, speaking very freely. (More about his educational background in the next tweet.) So I call this real fluency. 11/

The fact that Kono graduated from Georgetown is well known, but it goes deeper than that. He was in Keio University’s elite affiliated school system since middle school, and actually went to Keio U. for 2 months. But he decided then to go another route and 12/

...entered a boarding (high) school in the US to get a concentrated education in English. He went to Georgetown following that.

Of all the Japanese politicians, he is by far the most fluent in English, for good reason. 13/

Footnote: despite all the lip service given to the necessity for Japanese to be proficient in English, for a long time there was a stigma against Japanese people who were actually fluent. You may have ppl deny this, but I have experienced this myself, and so did my father. 14/

My father loved English and had a lot of exposure to English speakers since childhood, being the son of Salvation Army officers. He was very fluent. Yet he was shunned by some in his company because he was *too* fluent for their liking. 15/

Hopefully this stigma has gone now, as well as the bullying experienced by returnee children (kikokushiko) for being too “foreign”. (The latter has lessened but still exists apparently.) 16/

As a kikokushijo I wasn’t bullied, but my nickname amongst some of my classmates was “gaijin”. I retaliated by getting way better test results than them, esp. in Japanese. 17/

(Adding that I got MUCH nastier (racist) comments/bullying when I went back to the US some years later at a high school, but that’s another story.)

Thanks for reading. 18/end

(clearly*, not ceary, and other typos)