Japanese in Action

Over the years I've carried on a love-hate relationship with fellow Texan Jack Seward. I bought Japanese in Action the May before I moved to Japan. And I blame it, in part, for my fear of speaking up and learning from my making mistakes. His stories of people who speak Japanese badly are so damning, that I decided that it was better to keep my mouth shut.

Like many military men, Mr. Seward is obviously a "sensing" type on the Myers-Briggs scale. He wants everything to make sense literally, so idiomatic expressions frustrate him. He feels it's his mission in life to point out that they don't "make sense". He is so literal-minded, that I cringe every time he relates a "funny story" in which he's lectured some hapless Japanese person on why Japanese doesn't make sense.

This is a bad attitude to take in learning any foreign language, but especially Japanese, which is rich with idiomatic expressions and indirect communication. Mr. Seward seems unable to focus on what is being communicated because he obsesses so on how it's communicated.

The positive, however, outweigh the negatives. Japanese in Action is a treasure trove of insightful gems into Japanese as well as a good, funny read. What better advice can you get about studying Japanese than Mr. Seward's cut-through-the-bullshit maxim "Start now."

"Do not make the common mistake of hoping that Japanese will just 'sort of come to you,' as foreign languages sometimes come to the heroes of storybooks. It will not. It will require much time and effort." 〜 p 15

The book is divided into three sections: one each for the beginning, intermediate, and advanced student. It's not a textbook. It's a book about Japanese. In addition to the excellent advice on how to study Japanese and where to find (pre-internet) study guides, there are chapters on numbers, colors, words for parts of the body (yes, Kurt, the difference between kokoro and shinzou), proverbs, dialects, bar talk, and how to be insulting.

I find myself returning to Japanese in Action every other year or so, to jumpstart my flagging studies. In his closing words, Mr. Seward's rallying cry reminds me why I'm studying in the first place and why I keep up this site--to emerge from this daze and bring my experience in Japan into focus.

"The pleasure has been in the learning, in the dawning of comprehension, in viewing the same scene through new and clearer eyes..." 〜 p 212

Recommendation: 5 stars (out of 5)
Audience: Anyone studying Japanese.

One more thing...Mr. Seward is definitely a man of his generation (WWII veteran) and his training (military). He imagines his audience as men, probably American businessmen in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. Although his language is often neutral..."the student of Japanese"...his anecdotes about men are all about GI's and businessmen, while those about women are about housewives and bar girls. Although this does not detract much from the real worth of the book, it does at times make it seem dated.

Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
April 25, 2003

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