Suddenly, a
teenager’s hand shoots up and a shout breaks the silence. “Done!” he calls
out, and passes his answer sheet to a
moderator.
Within seconds, Hiroaki Tsuchiya
has multiplied — in his head — a list of numbers that would make an
accountant’s head spin. How does he do it? On an imaginary abacus, just as
merchants, students and others have done throughout Asia for centuries.
Hours of
Practice
Today, despite computers and calculators, the
technique survives as a strenuous workout for the brain. Teachers say
almost anyone can master it if they start young, although it takes hours
of practice, mental dexterity and Herculean powers of
concentration.
“If you space out, you lose,”
said Tsuchiya, who at age 13 recently became the youngest winner of a
Kyoto tournament where Japan’s best mental mathematicians display their
amazing feats.
Tsuchiya, for example, takes
only a few moments to solve a problem like 992.587318 divided by
5,647.723. And he has to go to the final digit of the answer:
0.17575000013279688115015555826658.
Called
“anzan,” which translates roughly as “mental calculation,” the technique
springs from an age when the easiest way to work with large numbers was to
use an abacus, a manual calculator introduced to Japan from China in the
1500s.
The box-shaped instrument is made of
beads that serve as counters, which users push back and forth along metal
rods, clicking their way through cube roots, addition and subtraction,
long division.
Quick But Not So
Easy
But skilled abacus users often find it easier to just
imagine the beads rather than physically move
them.
This is anzan, and those who master it
can work faster than a clerk on an adding
machine.
“Instead of thinking of the number
one, imagine an apple in your pocket. It has shape, it’s concrete.” said
Koji Suzuki, a Tokyo abacus instructor. “In anzan, we try to see the
beads.”
That’s obvious at the Kyoto
competition.
When contestants’ race through
problems, their fingers skitter across ghost abaci lying on the table.
Others bob or rock in their seats, moving unconsciously to the
internalized lilt of the sliding beads.
As
with many traditional Japanese arts, students of the abacus move through
several ranks of expertise. The top title is given only to those who get
perfect scores in four categories: multiplication, division, addition and
subtraction, and bookkeeping — in which students calculate numbers written
on a stack of paper.
Keeping the
Brain Sharp
Instructors say there’s a gain from such mental
acrobatics besides money saved on calculator
batteries.
Students who master anzan, they
insist, tend to excel not only in math, but other subjects as
well.
“You have to be fast, and you have to be
accurate,” said Kazuyuki Takayanagi, another instructor. “Your mind gets
foggy if you’re using a calculator all the
time.”
Kimiko Kawano, a scientist at Nippon
Medical School who has analyzed the brain activity of anzan experts, says
learning the skill doesn’t hasten or improve brain
development.
But the concentration and imaging
techniques needed for anzan — which exercises the right side of the brain
rather than the analytic left, used for ordinary calculation — can be
useful in non-mathematical situations, she
added.
“Students I’ve studied say that other
subjects become easier for them,” Kawano said. “If someone makes a
conscious effort to apply the techniques, they may be able to learn faster
than others.”
Then again, your average anzan
whiz is probably more inclined to study than most.
Two Hours
Practice Each Day
Abacus proficiency takes several nights a
week of special classes, as Japanese schools have for the most part phased
out such instruction, requiring only a few introductory lessons in the
third grade.
And young experts like the
contest-winning Tsuchiya, who started working the beads in kindergarten,
practice at least two hours a day — ”still not enough,” according to his
teacher.
Today, most young Japanese don’t use
an abacus, much less perform calculations in their head. Older store
clerks may use the instrument to make change or add up a restaurant tab,
but such a scene is increasingly rare.
“I’ve
got an abacus at home, but it’s become just a toy for my toddler to play
with,” said Tokyo housewife Ikuko Tsunokake, 26. “With calculators and
computers, I have my doubts about its
usefulness.”
Takayanagi, the teacher, says
abacus instruction has gone the way of other traditional Japanese pursuits
like flower arranging or calligraphy, replaced by piano lessons, baseball
games, English classes.
“People used to need
the abacus to get a job,” Takayanagi said. “Now, it’s just a brain
exercise.” 
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