The 50-sound table was a 'blueprint for sound.' Are Japanese people really bad at logical thinking?

Please try saying 'ka' and 'ga' slowly while holding your finger to your throat.

The shape of your mouth and the position of your tongue hardly change, but don't you feel your throat vibrate only when you say 'ga'?

Japanese expresses this physical difference with a single symbol, the 'dakuten' (゛). If you add a dakuten to 'ka-ki-ku-ke-ko', it becomes 'ga-gi-gu-ge-go'.

We have used this naturally since we were children, but when you think about it, it is a surprisingly well-organized system.

When I realized this, the 50-sound table felt like a program blueprint for the sounds humans produce. And then, a question arose.

Are Japanese people really bad at logical thinking?

Certainly, the term 'logical thinking' itself sounds difficult, and when I started working, I felt uncomfortable explaining things logically, and it seems many people around me felt the same way.

However, with this realization, I have come to think that 'perhaps Japanese people are not actually bad at logical thinking itself.'

The surprisingly structured Japanese 50-sound table

The 'a-i-u-e-o' we have seen naturally since we were children.

Looking vertically, the five vowels 'a, i, u, e, o' are lined up. Looking horizontally, the consonant series such as the ka-row, sa-row, and ta-row are lined up. In other words, the 50-sound table is like a matrix that organizes sounds along vertical and horizontal axes.

Furthermore, Japanese kana are characters that are easy to handle as units of sound. If you line up 'na' and 'tsu', you can read it as 'natsu' just like that.

On the other hand, in the alphabet, the name of the letter itself and its function within a word are separate.

When read as a letter, 'b' is 'bee' and 'a' is 'ay'. However, when they are lined up as 'ba', you don't read it as 'bee-ay'. In that case, 'b' functions as a consonant and 'a' as a vowel, resulting in a sound close to 'ba'.

In other words, kana is close to a system of lining up sound units as they are, while the alphabet is close to a system of assembling sound components.

Furthermore, when 'ka-ki-ku-ke-ko' gets a dakuten, it becomes 'ga-gi-gu-ge-go'. Roughly speaking, while using a similar mouth shape, the sound changes depending on whether the vocal cords vibrate or not.

Although there are exceptions and subtle differences in phonetics, the fact thatsuch a well-organized structure is hidden within the Japanese languagethat we use daily is interesting in itself.

Looking across Japanese culture, I think there are quite a few examples where thought-out structures are embedded in forms and mechanisms rather than in words.

For example, the wooden joinery used by temple carpenters, which supports buildings through the combination of wood rather than relying on nails, is one such case. The 'musha-gaeshi' (warrior-repelling) stone walls of my hometown, Kumamoto Castle, are another. The base is gentle, but the slope becomes steeper as it goes up, creating a defensive structure that prevents enemies from climbing.

These contain a highly sophisticated design philosophy that deeply understands properties and thinks through structures.

However, the culture of explaining things through words may have been weak.

On the other hand, Japan has the phrase 'aun no kokyu' (the breath of 'a' and 'un').
Understanding without saying a word.
Reading the room.
Communicating through eye contact.
There is an aspect that has valued such intuitive understanding.

Looking back on my childhood, I feel that rather than explaining things by 'verbalizing' them, we explained them by actually showing how to do it, saying, 'You do it like this.'

Therefore, even if there was the ability to create structures, the training to explain those structures in words may not have been sufficient. I feel that this is the reason why it is said that 'Japanese people are bad at logical thinking.'

In other words, it is not that we are bad at logical thinking, but that we should increase the practice of converting things we vaguely understandinto a form that can be conveyed to others.

Take 'things you vaguely understand' and...

What is happening?
Why do you think that way?
What are some concrete examples?

Break them down and make them visible.

Just as the 50-character syllabary chart arranges human sounds vertically and horizontally, we should take the structures in our heads and bring them out as words or diagrams.

Logical thinking may not be about memorizing difficult theories, but rather a technique for converting the structures within yourself into a form visible to others.

In your head, you understand it vaguely. But when you try to put it into words, you can't explain it well. I have written in detail in this article about how to organize such fuzzy mental meetings and lead them to a single goal.

If you feel that you 'want to change what you are thinking into words that can be conveyed to others,' I would be happy if you would read this as well.