The Ancient Tool Used in Japan to Strengthen Memory & Focus:…

William Gib­son famous­ly observed that the future is already here, it’s just not even­ly dis­trib­uted. That line is often thought to have been inspired by Japan, which was already pro­ject­ing a thor­ough­ly futur­is­tic image, at least in pop­u­lar cul­ture, by the time he made his debut with Neu­ro­mancer in 1984. But as any­one who’s spent enough time in the coun­try under­stands — albeit not with­out frus­tra­tion — even twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Japan remains in many ways a pre-dig­i­tal soci­ety. Many busi­ness­es only take cash, more than a few ser­vices require com­mu­ni­ca­tion by fax, and there’s no sub­sti­tute for a phys­i­cal han­ko seal on impor­tant doc­u­ments. Even so, it may come as a sur­prise to learn that Japan still uses aba­cus­es.

Or rather, Japan still uses aba­cus­es as edu­ca­tion­al tools: you won’t see many shop­keep­ers pull them out while ring­ing up your pur­chas­es, but if you glance in the win­dow of the right kind of pri­vate acad­e­my, you might well see young stu­dents furi­ous­ly per­form­ing cal­cu­la­tions the very old-fash­ioned way.

If they’re suf­fi­cient­ly advanced, as explained in the BBC video above, they won’t even have actu­al aba­cus­es; they’ll just move around beads pic­tured in their heads. (It brings to mind how Dustin Hoff­man’s savant in Rain Man explains his per­for­mance of seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble men­tal math: “I see it.”) Such inten­sive aba­cus edu­ca­tion was com­mon across north­east Asia in the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when the arith­metic skills it cul­ti­vat­ed were impor­tant for both indi­vid­ual sur­vival and nation­al devel­op­ment.

It was that very devel­op­ment that tend­ed to push the aba­cus into obso­les­cence. When Korea, where I live, could afford elec­tron­ic cal­cu­la­tors, the pres­tige asso­ci­at­ed with aba­cus mas­tery dis­solved prac­ti­cal­ly overnight. Deter­mined Kore­an par­ents can still sign their chil­dren up for jupan class­es, much as Chi­nese par­ents might encour­age theirs to enter into suan­pan com­pe­ti­tions out of a sense of civ­i­liza­tion­al pride, but they have noth­ing like the sta­tus the soroban enjoys in Japan. That may be vin­di­cat­ed by neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research point­ing toward the ben­e­fits learn­ing the aba­cus can have on a devel­op­ing brain’s cog­ni­tive func­tions. As the BBC video explains, aba­cus train­ing enhances cog­ni­tive func­tion by sharp­en­ing con­cen­tra­tion, accel­er­at­ing infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing, and strength­en­ing visu­al mem­o­ry, lead­ing to improved mem­o­ry and sus­tained focus. But as any enthu­si­ast of Japan­ese craft cul­ture knows, no mat­ter how much hard­er it may be to do things with ana­log tools, some­times it’s just more sat­is­fy­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Math Cours­es

The Won­der­ful Wood­en Mar­ble Adding Machine

The Math­e­mat­ics Behind Origa­mi, the Ancient Japan­ese Art of Paper Fold­ing

Com­plex Math Made Sim­ple With Engag­ing Ani­ma­tions: Fouri­er Trans­form, Cal­cu­lus, Lin­ear Alge­bra, Neur­al Net­works & More

Japan­ese Musi­cians Turn Obso­lete Machines Into Musi­cal Instru­ments: Cath­ode Ray Tube TVs, Over­head Pro­jec­tors, Reel-to-Reel Tape Machines & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.