It seems to be conventional wisdom -- if "wisdom" is the word -- that Japanese people do not excel at mastering foreign languages. Some surveys of the results of international English-proficiency tests have them occupying the murky depths, below even the likes of North Koreans. Does the "Dear Leader," by chance, know something that the "Beautiful Leader" doesn't?

It used to be said of Americans that they were "unable" to speak foreign languages -- except, of course, for those born into one. Despite the bizarre concept that any nationality could render a people mentally or temperamentally incapable of learning a foreign language, this was a "fact" routinely touted both in the United States and abroad.

I thought so too at one time. Two years of foreign-language study was compulsory in my U.S. high school. I took Latin (no need to speak that), but most of my friends studied French. After two years, not one of them could pronounce the language with remote accuracy, let alone utter a word of it in conversation. The results in university were not much better, save for those students who spent their junior year in Europe or Latin America. We all assumed that our green passport (U.S. passports later turned blue) was the barrier to our foreign-language acquisition.