Abacus enjoying renewed popularity in Japan

Sunday 19th July, 04:25 AM JST

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

› Login to comment

15 Comments

Gaijinocchio at 07:57 AM JST - 19th July

The Abacus? Going back to the Stone Age where you belong, eh Japan?
Badsey at 09:56 AM JST - 19th July

I had to make a new Abacus to calculate America's debt to the Federal Reserve = My Abacus can now calculate to 10/100 Trillion --> I figure my new Abacus should be good for a year or two.

Zimbabwe uses abacuses because cheap calculators don't go that high and scientific notation can be tricky for some.
blvtzpk at 10:29 AM JST - 19th July

Sales of soroban training software for Nintendo DS game consoles are reportedly going well while software development company Four Winds Inc. has marketed two soroban software titles with sales of 40,000 copies in the last two years.

The soroban on the DS...how...ironic.
smithinjapan at 02:15 PM JST - 19th July

There is NOTHING wrong with learning the abacus. I doubt we'll ever be at a point where we'll go back to using it daily and no electronics exist (that is to say, in a world in which humans still exist), but it can't hurt. As for on the Nintendo DS, that seems just stupid.
ilcub76 at 04:53 PM JST - 19th July

I remember having one as a child, but didn't know how to use it. It's actually kind of nice seeing people getting back to basics in life. The owner of an oden shop that I go to uses only an abacus to calculate the tab. She's pretty fast with it too!
ThonTaddeo at 06:54 PM JST - 19th July

I love the abacus -- requires no batteries, works anywhere, and connects people from across the centuries. I have a Chinese model with two beads on the top row and five on the bottom, which is rare in Japan these days but was once common.

My only problem with abacus education is that just about all the guidebooks and teaching methods demand that the user be right-handed, and it's about time we left that prejudice in the dust. An electronic calculator can be operated easily with either hand, but so can the Russian "schot' (sp?) abacus, which has the bars aligned horizontally.

My own math-related treasure is a 1960s electronic calculator in which the numbers are displayed inside orange-filament Nixie tubes. It's huge -- the size of a Playstation 3 -- and looks absolutely fantastic. It's like something Richard Feynman would have used.

More important than the abacus, I think, is teaching kids to do math mentally, and to learn how to estimate well. No one should be using any device of any kind to solve the ‘‘25 notebooks, each student entitled to three, how many left over?’’ problem. If you're old enough to train on the abacus, you're old enough to solve this in your head.
bamboohat at 11:57 PM JST - 19th July

While this sounds quaint and everything, I seriously doubt there is any connection between using an abacus and improving brain function. You are merely changing tools that do your figuring for you.

As far as going to a cram school, and different methods to use this thing, five minutes on youtube and you're good to go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvsnftXXKdw
Triple888 at 12:19 AM JST - 20th July

If it's for straight forward arithmetic then the abacus beats the electronic calculator any day. How often does the average person need to use square-root, trigonometry or logarithmic calculations?
Asara at 10:35 AM JST - 20th July

Can you find any greenest calculator on earth despite soroban?!? No battery chemical waste and no electrical waste are required it only uses your finger microenergy that is all. Regarding time amount to use for a calculation I am afraid it is even far more faster than a calculator for everyday shopping or house finance calculation areas.
kryptonomikon at 10:36 AM JST - 20th July

Using an abacus requires your brain to do more work than just punching in numbers into an electronic calculator. You learn to visualize the values going around instead of seeing just the end result. I'm not going to quote any scientific studies, but I personally know people who grew up using the abacus. Even when they aren't using one, they are much faster at instant mental arithmetic than people who grew up spoiled with their Casio calculators and Excel.
Sarge at 01:37 PM JST - 20th July

I was amazed at seeing this Japanese guy with an abacus whip Peter Barakan, who had an electronic calculator!
BurakuminDes at 05:19 PM JST - 20th July

I was once at a little restaurant here where the old woman cashier used an abacus...and made a mistake to the tune of about 500 yen - in her favour! I pointed it out to her, and she deeply apologised and was super embarrassed. An innocent mistake. Give me the Casio calculator any day, leave the abacus for the museums and antique shops.
DeepAir65 at 07:56 PM JST - 20th July

I applaud anything that improves people's arithmetic. These days it seems no-one can do mental arithmetic which is so sad.

One on my interview questions to technical people (programmers) is to ask them how they would calculate 17.5% (I'm from the UK where that is the sales tax) of say 250 - quite comical to see most of their expressions!
Mark_McCracken at 10:33 PM JST - 20th July

Abacus enjoying renewed popularity in Japan.

Complete nonsense. The number of people taking the soroban certification test is down 90% since 1980. In fiscal 2008, 0.157% of the Japanese population took the test. The abacus is clearly nowhere close to "enjoying renewed popularity".
Jeff198524 at 07:52 AM JST - 21st July

It's amazing how whiny immigrants to Japan make a positive story like this into something negative.