Chopstick Incompetency Crisis

 

“If some experts in this country are right, a fast growing number of people, most of them young, cannot properly use an implement so basic that it is virtually a symbol of Asia. A college professor who has studied the situation says that well over one-third of Japanese in their 30s and younger are chopstick incompetents.” 1984 – This unusual rice bowl, circa early 1990’s, has the etiquette for eating from a bowl and etiquette for chopstick use printed on the inside and outside of the bowl. 

Chopstick Incompetency Becomes Crisis for Japan

Chopsticks have become too much to handle for many Japanese, If some experts in this country are right, a fast growing number of people, most of them young, cannot properly use an implement so basic that it is virtually a symbol of Asia. A college professor who has studied the situation says that well over one-third of Japanese in their 30s and younger are chopstick incompetents. 

In a Ministry of Education report released last month, only 48.4 percent of elementary school pupils surveyed said they could correctly wield chopsticks, or hashi, as they are called in Japanese. The Tokyo police department has grown concerned enough to give recruits a crash course in chopstick use and etiquette. "We can't convince them to use chopsticks properly unless we tell them logically that using the hands is good for their brains and things like that,” one police inspector said. 

In this capital’s bustling Shinjuku section, a company called Office Create has gone into the hashi training business, offering two hours of instruction every week for three months. Fee: nearly $80. Department stores and supermarkets now stock “trainer chopsticks,” plastic devices with loops to show youngsters where to put their fingers. According to the manufacturer, Tohoku Kako, sales started to rocket late last year and now approach 10,000 pairs a day. “We expect our business to continue to do well," said Hiroyasu Ito, the company's sales director “Our target population 3 to 8 years old is as large as 8 million." 

Why all this has occurred is one of those questions that start arguments, but there is little dispute that the decline augurs ill for Japan. To some Japanese, chopsticks touch the national soul an outgrowth of the widely held belief that Japan prevails against bigger, better-equipped countries because its people are nimble and quick-witted “Many scholars attribute the dexterity of the Japanese people to hashi, and I myself think that has some validity," said Masaaki Yatagai, a professor at Keihin Women's University in Kamakura, south of Tokyo. His specialty is preschool education, especially how youngsters learn basic life skills.’’ 

“Some people.” Yatagai said, “even think that hashi are responsible for the dexterity and resourcefulness that helped bring about Japan’s economic boom. More than a few Japanese blame the chopstick decline on Western foods and the collateral reliance on knives and forks They cite the many youngsters who now learn to eat with an implement that has a fork on one end and a spoon on the other. Others say no, that the fault lies with an educational system that emphasizes test-taking ability to such an extent that it often ignores teaching children how to get through the day. Repeated studies show that fewer and fewer Japanese children are familiar with skills such as peeling an apple or sharpening pencils with a knife. Yatagai thinks they are all wrong. It isn't the education system or the two-headed fork-spoon or the advent of hamburgers in Japan, he said. 

In research performed in 1935, he noted, the average Japanese child learned to use chopsticks properly at the preschool age of 3. Now the average age has doubled, and many youngsters never attain proficiency “Parents just don’t want to admit that they’re the cause of the problem.” the professor said “They themselves can’t handle chopsticks properly of late.” None of this is meant to suggest that across Japan people are dropping food into their laps. As best as a casual observer can tell, that distinction is still left largely to foreign tourists. “Do you know how to use chopsticks?” is on the list of favorite Japanese questions to new acquaintances from the West.) It is the imprecision of the latter-day hashi technique that shocks the purists. 

The sticks should be held with one cradled between the thumb and index finger, the other planted between the index and middle fingers, with the middle finger kept between the two sticks Instead, many Japanese hold hashi like a pen, or place the sticks between the middle and ring fingers. or cross the sticks, or hold them much too low. To avert the accidents they risk with their poor technique, these people often keep their heads close to the plate This is called mugui dog-style. Some children have been known to spear food with chopsticks, a sin on a par in other countries with eating peas with a knife. – By Clyde Haberman, for the N.Y. Times News Service Tokyo, 1984

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