Dyslexia Not Unusual
in Japan

In some English-speaking countries, 5 percent to 10 percent of people are said to suffer from dyslexia, which affects their ability to learn to read and write despite otherwise normal intellectual development. In Japan, too, although its writing system is very different from that of English, recent research has revealed that there are more people suffering the condition than previously thought.

Dyslexia is a neurological disorder that causes difficulties in learning the shapes of characters and relating sounds to corresponding letters. It is believed that people with dyslexia find it difficult to split words into their component sounds, making them unable to match the sounds to the shapes of letters, leading to difficulty in memorizing letters.

Most sufferers show otherwise normal development in hearing, vision and intelligence, and their condition is often called "developmental dyslexia" to distinguish them from people who are stricken with similar difficulties in the aftermath of strokes and other forms of illness or injury leading to brain damage.

In English, pronunciation of letters is quite irregular--for example, the letter A is pronounced differently in "ace" and "apple." Therefore, it is said dyslexic symptoms can be easily recognized in countries where English is spoken. Consequently, numerous studies of the condition have been made in such countries since the 1960s.

In contrast, it has long been widely believed that a smaller number of people were dyslexic in Japan because its language features the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, which are far less irregular than the Roman alphabet from a phonetic point of view.

However, research by Akira Uno, associate professor at Tsukuba University, seems to disprove this belief. Uno, an expert in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, conducted a study two years ago on 1,200 primary school students, giving them tests of intelligence and perception--for example, testing them on pictorial figure recognition--as well as academic achievement tests focusing on reading and writing words.

These tests showed that about 1 percent of surveyed children had difficulties in reading kana characters. However, the figure climbed to about 5 percent to 6 percent for reading kanji, which are not phonetic.

As for writing, about 3 percent to 4 percent of the surveyed students had difficulties with kana. The figure was about 7 percent to 8 percent with kanji. None of the surveyed children showed problems in general intellectual development, Uno said.

Most children in the upper grades of primary school give nearly 100 percent correct answers in tests of reading and writing hiragana and katakana, while for kanji they are supposed to have learned by the second year of primary school, the rate of correct answers is more than 90 percent, according to Uno.

"Although we need more precise tests to determine diagnosis," Uno pointed out, "if students have considerable difficulty in reading and writing kanji despite otherwise normal intellectual development, it is highly possible that they have some kind of recognition disability as a background factor."

Because only a small number of children have difficulty reading and writing kana, they might end up being misunderstood as having failed to study enough when they run into difficulty reading and writing kanji.

Some experts have pointed out that many middle school students who find learning English hard also often have minor difficulties with kana and kanji. Why does dyslexia happen? The latest research using "functional MRI" is starting to reveal what parts of the brain are used for reading and writing.

In normal cases, reading and writing are said to involve processes such as analyzing the sounds in each word; relating letters to sounds; and grasping meaning. These processes are handled by cooperation between the temporal and parietal lobes on the left side of the brain.

However, in the case of dyslexic people, those parts are less active, according to research led by Yale University in the United States.

On the other hand, according to a report by Chinese scientists featured in September in the journal Nature, for kanji-using dyslexic people it was the middle frontal gyrus in the left side of the brain that functioned less actively--a different area from that indicated by research conducted in English-speaking countries.

The Chinese scientists' results suggests that how the brain processes letters could be different depending on the specific writing system. In Japan, whose language features a mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji, related research on brain functions has only just kicked off and dyslexia itself is still not recognized well.

Dyslexic people can and do develop their own special talents. Actor Tom Cruise, for example, has made it public that he learns lines not from scripts, but from recorded material. Thomas Edison and Walt Disney were among those who are thought to have overcome dyslexia to succeed.

Special educational approaches offered to dyslexics overseas, such as allowing them to use computers in taking examinations and extending testing times for them, can help them perform to their full academic abilities.

On the other hand, those who have been diagnosed with dyslexia in Japan often face a lack of understanding about the condition from those around them. "Japan is not free of cases of dyslexia," said Shuhei Suzuki, doctor at Osaka Medical College's center for learning disabilities, one of the nation's pioneering institutions in offering educational assistance to dyslexics.

"It is necessary to establish diagnostic criteria suitable for Japanese as soon as possible." In 2001, a nonprofit organization called Extraordinary Dyslexic Gifted Eclectic (EDGE) was established mainly by the parents of dyslexic children to offer educational assistance and promote dyslexia awareness among the public.

EDGE founder Eiko Todo pointed to one of the central problems of dyslexia. "These children suffer from low self-esteem as they believe their difficulties in studying lie in a lack of ability," she said.

Original article by Keiko Katayama / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer.
January 2005

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