[Essay] The story of how the 'novel questions' on the Common First Stage Exam could not even be solved by the author, Senji Kuroi

This is an answer essay to last week's article.

Inspired by Ozoe-kun's essay, I have decided to write about an incident that occurred at the Asahi Broadcasting part-time job corner after 1982.

While reading his writing, memories of an interaction with a Kobe University female student regarding the 'Common First Stage Exam,' which I hadn't thought about in years, came flooding back.

As Ozoe-kun writes, around that time, several male students from the Doshisha University Comedy Research Club and several female students, mostly from the Kobe University Faculty of Economics, would come to the part-time corner to do odd jobs like sorting postcards and writing addresses.

Perhaps because I didn't get along well with the Kobe University female students, I ended up becoming friends only with the 'aho-ahoshii' (silly/goofy) members of the Doshisha Comedy Research Club. We got along extremely well.

Besides Ozoe-kun and Namase-kun, the part-time corner also included Shunsuke Shimada, who is now the president of Shimada Shoji and was always cheerful, easygoing, and smart, as well as Tetsushi Sueyoshi, a stocky gourmet student with whom I used to go out to eat lunches at places like 'Naniwa Kappo Kigawa.' I was very comfortable with them, and there was never a shortage of pleasant laughter when we talked together.

It was one day in that daily life. It was March 1985.

I was watching TV at my apartment in Takarazuka when I happened upon the author Senji Kuroi, sitting in a chair with a table attached, talking to viewers about the problems with the 'Common First Stage Exam.' The university Common First Stage Exam had already begun several years prior.

Looking at the NHK program schedule from that time now, I believe this program was the 'NHK News Commentary,' which was broadcast live for 15 minutes every Monday through Friday at 9:45 PM.

It was a story like this.

That was the gist of Mr. Senji Kuroi's story.

I was very intrigued. I wanted to try solving it myself.

I found that Common First Stage question from the newspaper I had kept at home and solved it. When I checked the answers, to my surprise, I also got every single question spectacularly wrong.

What was going on? Just as Mr. Senji Kuroi said, the Japanese language questions on the Common First Stage Exam seemed strange. Like Mr. Kuroi, I also harbored a major doubt.

The next day, when I went to the office and went to the part-time corner as usual, the female students from the Kobe University Faculty of Economics were there along with the men from the Doshisha Comedy Research Club. The Common First Stage Exam started in 1979. They had also taken it and passed to get into university. I told those female students the whole story. And I said this:

'Isn't it absurd that even the author who wrote it can't get the right answer? It's strange to have questions like this on a modern Japanese language test.'

Then, one of the Kobe University girls, who had been sorting postcards and writing addresses until then, stopped working and said this to me:

'I think that way of thinking is wrong, both for you, Mr. Matsumoto, and for the author, Mr. Senji Kuroi himself.'

I was bewildered by what she was saying.

'What do you mean?'

'If you only read a part of a novel, you can't really know the characters' personalities or psychology. Therefore, whether it's a four-choice or five-choice question, you shouldn't think about the characters' psychology for these types of multiple-choice questions.'
'Oh?'
'What you should think about is the psychology of the questioner, that is, the person who made the question. To get the right answer on a multiple-choice question, you just need to figure out the questioner's psychology—which of the choices they want you to answer as the correct one. You just have to align yourself with the questioner's feelings. Then you can get it right 100%.'
'Wait, is that it? Do examinees have to guess the feelings of the questioner?'
'Yes, that's right. That's what the multiple-choice questions on the Common First Stage are.'
'I didn't know that...'
'Actually, this is a basic thing for the Common First Stage.'

The secret to getting the right answer on multiple-choice questions, at least for long-form reading comprehension of novels on the Common First Stage, is not to deeply read the psychology of the characters, but to deeply read the psychology of the questioner. The psychology of the characters in the novel doesn't matter; above all, the intention of the questioner is what is important—that is what is meant by 'exam technique.'

'What a lousy way to make questions. This is no good,' I couldn't help but grumble.

I recall that in my own exam days, there were no questions like three-choice or four-choice ones, where the only merit was that they were easy to grade. In my day, the exam was a one-time event, and national universities, like private ones, created their own individual exam questions, and each university had its own personality. They were trying to accept students who matched that personality.

Come to think of it, for the Japanese language exam at Kyoto University, which I took, I don't remember the theme, but I was instructed to write a logical essay of several hundred characters. In the Japanese language entrance exam the previous year, the lyrics to the first and second verses of a pseudo-classical song were presented, and the question was, 'Based on this, write the third verse.'

While this must have been a daunting task for those doing the grading, I believe these questions were quite effective for gauging logical thinking and writing ability. I suspect the same was true for the University of Tokyo entrance exam that Senji Kuroi took.

It seemed to me that multiple-choice questions were heavily favored simply to make the Common First Stage Examination easier to grade. I can only think that the way the questions were formulated was far too simplistic.

Now, in October 1985, I joined the program 'Yoru no A-Time,' hosted by Shinsuke Shimada, as a second producer. For that show, we created an episode where we dramatized the excerpt from the novel 'Haru no Michishirube' (Spring Signpost) that appeared on the 1984 Common First Stage Exam, and had Shinsuke and everyone in the studio try to solve the three-choice question.

I wanted to interestingly expose the unsightly reality of the Common First Stage Examination. When I mentioned this idea in passing during a planning meeting, the writer Gasshan (Hiroaki Higashino) and the chief director, Hiromitsu Maeno, both found it very amusing and jumped on board. I recall that back then, I was making programs with everyone in that same delightful spirit.

By the way, the Common First Stage Examination was later renamed the 'Center Test,' and now it is apparently called the 'Common Test for University Admissions.' I wonder what the Japanese language questions are like now.

Surely they aren't still asking students to guess the psychology of 'which of the three or four choices the person who wrote the question wants them to pick as the correct answer,' are they? We must not force 18 or 19-year-old, pure-hearted students to provide 'considerate answers' to the adults who wrote the questions.

It seems that Senji Kuroi's work was used again recently in the 2022 Common Test. Mr. Kuroi is still in good health this year, 2025, at the age of 93, and I am sure he still keeps a sharp eye on how entrance exam questions are handled.