By Minako Kamio

Japanese to Read Aloud was published in autumn 2001 and became a bestseller, which was written with the intention to be recited. This book contains classic Japanese masterpieces, poems, and comic stories, etc. Takashi Saito, the author of this book, has written many books, such as, Why Do Children Explode with Anger?, and To Regain Physical Sense, and he has a private school on the Internet. <Homepageaddress: http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~saito/>.

This book covers various genres such as the sutras, comic stories, Chinese poems, and tongue twisters, including 76 parts extracted from the beginning of The Narrow Road to the Deep North (by Matsuo Basho), The Tale of the Heike, and The Pillow Book (by Sei Shounagon), and so on. We have learned these classic works through our junior and senior high school textbooks. But how many people in our generation can recite them ? The present young generation shows a tendency not to be good at recitation. Saito's opinion is that in modern Japan, people who are able to recite poems or pieces of literary works that they like are decreasing, and ﾒRecitation culture" is on the edge of extinction.

Because of the present Japanese educational system, teachers are apt to spend more time for an explanation rather than a recitation in their language classes. On the other hand, those who are in their seventies or eighties have lived in the age of energetic recitation and even now they can recite passages from several works. My grandfather lived in such age, so he can recite what he learned in his youth. "Gusei (by Shuki), " a Chinese classic that he used to recite for me, is also printed in this book. When I was little, I listened to his recitation without understanding the meaning. But I sometimes remember it for its comfortable tempo, rhythm and feeling.

Saito strongly criticizes that difficult contents are excluded from junior high and high school language textbooks. And he is against decreasing the opportunities to experience classic literature. He recommends that we should meet and recite literature of high quality at as early an age as possible. This is connected with improving childrenﾕs abilities in their mother tongue. For that, the old form of Chinese characters was changed to new forms. Hiragana is also printed alongside all Chinese characters so that school children can read it. It is also one of the features of this book that 15 to 20 lines of the above mentioned masterpieces are picked up and explanations of the contents are added to them.

"You need not understand immediately. In the process of your long life, the time when you can grasp that meaning will come. A composed attitude like this makes Japanese culture rich," he insists. Moreover, he says that cultivating the mother tongue will be a basic need, especially in this age in which we need to have much ability in English communication and in using information tools. The Foundation of thinking ability is in the mother tongue. In other words, if we can't think clearly in our mother tongue, it is impossible to learn to speak a foreign language correctly. Thus, recitation culture is deeply connected with improving the mother tongue.

A book like this has never been published before new . That it was published as a text for recitation is the charm point of this book. The best part is that readers can feel sentences deeply, and learn the good points of rhythm of language. It is a communication between the authors and the readers across the ages. Also, recitation will give us a chance to communicate better with people who are now in their seventies or eighties.

By reading this book, I was able to feel the good points of Japanese and wonder about recitation culture. Japanese language has produced poems and haiku with their own unique rhythms. Little by little, I hope that more people will feel this rhythm and I also hope that recitation, which can be an important part of lifelong education, will become more popular.

I will finish this article with a quote from Saito: "What I picked up here are jewels of Japanese. You take those into your body deeply and feel the brilliance in all your life. Thus, enjoy this book with an image of putting in jewels into your body."