FEATURE: Rice cooker maker opens Japanese-language school

Asian Economic News, June 3, 2002

TOKYO, Japan, May 28 Kyodo

''If you want to learn Japanese, go either to Tokyo or Okazaki!''

That is what people are beginning to hear outside Japan. But why Okazaki, a city with a population of 330,000 in Aichi Prefecture in the central part of Japan's main island of Honshu?

The answer is Hattori Kogyo K.K., a midsize corporation specializing in the manufacture of kitchen appliances for commercial use such as gas rice cookers.

Okazaki is the birthplace of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate that ruled Japan from 1603 to 1867. It is also known as a one-company town for Toyota Motor Corp.

What is not yet widely recognized here in Japan is that Japanese-language courses offered by Hattori Kogyo are winning acclaim abroad.

Hattori Kogyo President Yoshio Hattori set up the Yamasa Institute nine years ago to help foreigners study the Japanese language, work or set up service ventures in Japan.

Hattori, who studied in the United States, said he started the institute feeling Japan should follow the U.S. in offering foreigners the opportunities to exploit their talents and fulfill their aspirations.

Guiding a visitor to the institute in a five-story building near Hattori Kogyo's factory, he said he embarked on the language school undertaking without worrying about what he would do if it failed.

He said his father Tarokichi, who established the kitchen equipment-making company, allowed him to do whatever he pleased.

''My ultimate goal was the establishment of the institute,'' he said.

The government has not granted it ordinary corporate school status, but Hattori said, ''Instead there is the aspect that we can operate (the institution) freely.''

Personal computers and keyboards are lined up in the institute's classrooms where 177 students from 23 countries study Japanese taught by about 40 full-time and part-time teachers. Monthly tuition is 55,000 yen.

The courses range from four weeks to two years. Most students found the institute on the Internet. Yamasa Institute officials said they get 150 inquiries a day on its Web site.

About 95,000 foreigners are studying Japanese at universities and corporations in Japan, while there are about 1,500 Japanese-language educational facilities, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Declan Murphy, an Irishman who grew up in Sydney and who also holds an Australian passport, studied at the Yamasa Institute and set up Internet ventures in a leased office in the institute's building.

He is currently pouring his energies into the development of software for learning the Japanese language. He is in the midst of making a program that will enable each individual taking a correspondence course to sit in front of a personal computer and study Japanese in six areas, including vocabulary, kanji (Chinese characters), grammar and conversation. He will also incorporate photographs and recordings of spoken Japanese into the program.

He said the main characteristic of the program will be the full utilization of the experience he has acquired in studying the Japanese language.

The program will be available in a total of seven languages, including English.

''I've worked in Tokyo,'' Murphy said. ''But there are too many people there and foreigners such as us would be buried if we try to do something. Here (in Okazaki) I can work until midnight every night because my apartment is close (to the office).''

What is lacking most in Japanese business is know-how in the tourism industry, he said, adding that it lags behind in the utilization of the Internet and is slow in achieving growth in productivity.

Murphy said foreigners can engage in businesses in areas outside Tokyo if they utilize the Internet.

Hattori, meanwhile, is working in cooperation with a local university on ways to breath new life into the conservative one-company town and give vigor to the local region.