0024 Kanji TV

Let the French have their Academie Francaise, in Japan they’re harnessing the power of television for language quality control. The shows are called kokugo (or national language) and they were designed to counteract a national slump in both writing kanji characters and semantic knowledge. Viewers of “Quiz! Nihongo-O!” for example were shocked to find that more than half the contestants were unable to write the third-grade level kanji for “nose.” And on “Anata setsumei dekimasu ka? (Can you explain it?),” celebrities were flummoxed when asked to explain the difference between salmon the food (shake) and salmon the fish (sake). Shocking! Or is that “socking”? #ceas #japan #schneiderwind #tsutsui