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.
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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.
