Hideyuki Takano – A non-fiction writer who has learned more than 25 languages and traveled to the world’s frontiers – A very practical “language learning method

Interview with Mr. Takano

His book “100 Million Light Years to the Language Genius” is a big hit.
Chasing the phantom beast “Mbembe” in the Congo
Spent 7 months in the “Golden Triangle”, the world’s largest opium smuggling area.
He also went undercover in the mysterious independent state of Somaliland.

In 1995, he went to the Golden Triangle, the world’s largest drug trafficking area, to manufacture opium with ethnic minorities, and in 2009, he began working with armed forces and pirates. Since 2009, he has been following the reality of the mysterious independent state of Somaliland in East Africa, where armed forces and pirates abound. …… Nonfiction writer Hideyuki Takano, 56, who has been physically visiting remote areas of the world, has written a bestseller, “100 Million Light Years to the Language Genius” ( Shueisha International). When it was published in September 2010, it went into its fifth printing in just four months. It was an unprecedented hit for a language book.

I had not been in Japan for more than six months in the past 30 years, but Corona made it impossible for me to go abroad,” he said. I had unexpectedly more time to spare, so I decided to try my hand at a language book as a way of looking back on the interviews I had done. (Mr. Takano, hereafter, in parentheses)

Takano says that he learned more than 25 languages, including Lingala, Wa, Bomitaba, Thai, and Burmese, through his research in remote areas. He has always struggled with unfamiliar languages in the places he has visited, but through language he has come to understand the local worldview.

For example, in the Amazon, there is a language in which the only “numbers” are “1,” “2,” and “many. At first I wondered about this, too. But in the jungle, there is a tremendous number of plants and creatures, and many things are intertwined with each other. Counting itself is meaningless there. Fish of all kinds are caught in such abundance that it would be foolish to ask a fisherman, “How many fish did you catch? (laughs). In the villages in the Golden Triangle, there were no words like “friend,” “hello,” or “thank you. When you are cut off from the outside world, language develops in a way that is unique to that region. Language expresses the culture and temperament of the people who live there. That is very interesting.

Mr. Takano’s motto is to “go where no one else goes and do what no one else does. His writings are all valuable as “nonfiction,” but they are always full of humor.

What I want to write about is reality. There is always laughter in the field. I have been to war, refugee, poverty, and other places many times, and there is always laughter there. In fact, it is in these places that people cannot live without laughter.

There are many funny scenes in “100 Million Light Years to the Language Genius,” including a story about a woman he followed to a church in India before he could understand English and later discovered that the woman he thought was a kind old lady was Mother Teresa, and an episode in Yangon in which an elderly Japanese couple completely mistook him for a local.

Having mastered one language after another, Mr. Takano shares with us the “secret” of language learning.

What is necessary to learn a language is, above all, the purpose of learning the language. I learned to speak Lingala and Bomitaba in Congo in order to search for the phantom monster “Mbembe,” and I learned Shan to speak with drug lords. I think it is most important to have a purpose for what you want to do with the language you learn. And ……I had the feeling that the language I learned in my 20s was directly in the back of my head, but now that I am older, I have the feeling that it only reaches the surface of my brain. It is better to learn a language while you are young. It is best to start a language now. Everyone is at their youngest when they are at their best.

Mr. Takano says he is working on new projects this year.

Right now, I am busy with my research in Iraq,” he says. In Iraq, there is a huge swampy area where minorities, outlaws, and people who lost in the war escape. It’s like the Old Testament? Garden of Eden? in the Old Testament. Iraq itself is a very special country, so it is not easily spotlighted. This year, I plan to publish a book about such a place.

An endless spirit of challenge may be the greatest shortcut to becoming a “linguistic genius.

100 Million Light Years to the Language Genius

From the January 20 and 27, 2023 issues of FRIDAY