日本人不瞭解自己的軟實力

The More Japan's global relevance in economic, political and military terms seems to decline, the more it cares about projecting soft power. The government's "Cool Japan" project subsidizes "attractive products or services" that, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, "make full use of the unique characteristics of Japanese culture and lifestyle." These include decorative washi paper, a cosplay-inspired clothing brand and a bonsai plant grown with renewable energy.
日本在全球經濟、政治和軍事領域的重要性看似下滑得越厲害，它就越關心如何展示自己的軟實力。政府推出了“酷日本”(Cool Japan)計劃。經濟產業省表示，該計劃資助那些“充分利用了日本文化和生活方式獨特性的誘人產品或服務”。其中包括裝飾和紙、角色扮演風格的服裝品牌，以及使用可再生能源的盆栽。

Despite this concern, both the Japanese government and the Japanese people seem unaware of the global impact of Japan's most successful cultural export to date: the so-called Suzuki Method of music instruction.
儘管存在這種擔憂，但日本政府和公衆似乎都不知道，迄今爲止，日本最成功的文化輸出——名爲“鈴木教學法”(Suzuki Method)的一種音樂教學方式——具有怎樣的全球影響力。

Originally conceived in the 1930s by the violinist Shinichi Suzuki, the Suzuki Method proposes that all children can learn to play an instrument as naturally as they learn to speak their native language. According to the Talent Education Research Institute, an educational organization founded by Mr. Suzuki, about 400,000 children in 46 countries are now learning to play musical instruments the Suzuki way. But just 20,000 of them are Japanese. As the institute puts it, the method "has earned high acclaim overseas, more so than at home."
這個方法最初由小提琴家鈴木鎮一(Shinichi Suzuki)在20世紀30年代提出。它主張，所有小孩都能學會演奏樂器，就像他們學會講自己的母語一樣。鈴木鎮一創辦了才能教育研究會(Talent Education Research Institute)。該教育機構的資料顯示，目前在46個國家有40萬兒童正在鈴木教學法的幫助下學習演奏樂器，其中僅有2萬兒童是日本人。研究會指出，和在日本國內相比，該方法“在海外贏得了很高的評價”

It's not the first time the Japanese seem to miss what of theirs is worth celebrating and need to be told by outsiders. Ukiyo-e woodblock prints were used as wrapping paper for export wares when Japan began trading with the Western world in the second half of the 19th century. They were soon "discovered" by European Impressionist painters, who hailed them as a distinct art form. Modern Japan has repeatedly overlooked the merits of its own artistic and cultural production out of a blinding insecurity about its international standing.
日本似乎不知道自己的哪些方面值得珍視，反而需要外界來告知他們。這種情況已經不是第一次出現了。19世紀下半葉，日本開始與西方世界進行貿易往來時，浮世繪木版畫被用來包裝出口商品。歐洲的印象派畫家很快就“發現”了它們，將其譽爲一種獨特的藝術形式。由於對自身的國際聲譽存在一種盲目的不安全感，日本在近現代一再忽視自己的藝術和文化成就。

The Suzuki pedagogy was misunderstood from its very beginnings in the 1930s. Upon returning to Tokyo from Berlin, where he had spent most of his twenties, Mr. Suzuki found himself in high demand as a teacher. His first young pupils were conspicuously more skilled than others at the time — when classical musicians of any age were rare in Japan — and were soon heralded by the Japanese media as prodigies and geniuses.
從20世紀30年代誕生開始，鈴木教學法就遭到誤解。鈴木鎮一20到30歲之間的大部分時間都在柏林度過，返回東京之後，有很多人想聘請他爲師。他最初培養的一批年輕學生，明顯比其他人更嫺熟——當時在日本，任何年齡段的古典音樂演奏者都很罕見——而且很快就被日本媒體譽爲神童和天才。

Mr. Suzuki abhorred such terms. He believed that the sheer joy of making music or learning just about anything was accessible to all children. There was a pastoral element to his approach: Its main goal was not to mass-produce professional musicians but rather to mold individuals into sensitive and thoughtful human beings with "noble hearts."
鈴木鎮一討厭這樣的說法。他認爲，搞音樂或學習任何東西都會帶來純粹的快樂感，也是所有孩子都可以享受到的。他的教學方式具有一種田園風格：主要目的不是爲了批量培養專業音樂人，而是把個人塑造成敏感周到、有“高貴心靈”的人。

In "Powerful Education," published in September 1941, Mr. Suzuki called for reforming Japan's educational system; he argued that teachers were too quick to give up on children who lagged behind. He stressed the importance while, say, learning to play the violin of goal-setting, encouragement and repetition.
鈴木鎮一1941年9月發表《強大的教育》(Powerful Education)一文，呼籲改革日本的教育體系；他表示，老師們太急於放棄功課落後的孩子。他強調，在學習演奏小提琴等技能的過程中，設定目標、鼓勵和反覆練習很重要。

But this was too bold a proposal for the time. The Japanese empire had already embarked on its ill-conceived expansionist path, having started a war with China in 1937. Some of Mr. Suzuki's young students were called unpatriotic for playing music during a national emergency.
但是這個建議太超前了。當時日本帝國已經開始進行惡意擴張，在1937年與中國開了戰。由於在國家處於非常時刻之際演奏音樂，鈴木鎮一的一些年輕學生被說成不愛國。

In this oppressive atmosphere, the kind of sweeping change Mr. Suzuki envisioned, which required re-educating the educators, did not go down well. As Japan was beginning to lose yet another war it had started, this one against the United States and its allies, he wrote another book urging elementary school reform. The authorities prevented its publication.
在這種壓抑的氛圍下，鈴木鎮一設想中需要對教育者進行再教育的徹底改革沒有被衆人接受。日本也對美國及其盟友開了戰，當它在這場戰爭中露出敗象時，鈴木鎮一寫了另一本書，呼籲對小學進行改革。當局阻止了該書的出版。

The war eventually ended and then, in March 1955, less than 10 years after Japan's utter defeat, Mr. Suzuki gathered some 1,200 children in a gymnasium in Tokyo. Black-and-white footage shows the 56-year-old Suzuki doing some lithe footwork on a makeshift podium and waving his bow like a wizard's wand as he conducts the young violinists through difficult pieces, including Bach's Double Concerto.
戰爭終於結束了。在1955年3月，距離日本戰敗不到10年的時間，鈴木鎮一把1200名兒童聚集在東京的一座體育館內。黑白畫面顯示，56歲的鈴木站在一個臨時搭建的講臺上，當年輕的小提琴學生演奏一個又一個困難曲目時，比如巴赫的二重協奏曲，他會一邊步履輕盈地走動，一邊揮舞着琴弓，就像揮舞魔杖一樣，指導學生們演奏。

News of this group concert, the first Suzuki performance to attract national attention, reached the United States. American instructors traveled to Mr. Suzuki's music school in Matsumoto, a scenic mountain town, hoping to discover the secrets of this Japanese miracle.
通過這次團體演奏，鈴木鎮一首次吸引了全日本的關注，並讓消息傳到了美國。美國教師前往鈴木鎮一音樂學校的所在地——風景秀麗的山地城市松本——希望能發現這個日本奇蹟的祕密。That concert was deemed all the more remarkable in the United States for seeming incongruous, because it featured Japanese children playing Western instruments. What's more, had those young Japanese been born a few years earlier, they could easily have been among the soldiers American forces had fought. The Suzuki children represented the rebirth of a softer, gentler kind of Japan.
這場演奏會在美國引起的反響甚至比在日本更加強烈，因爲它給人的感覺似乎不太協調，首先這是日本孩子在演奏西洋樂器，而更重要的是，如果這些年輕的日本人早幾年出生，就很可能會和美國軍隊交火。鈴木鎮一學校的這些兒童，代表了更溫和、更文雅的那部分日本精神的重生。

The rest of the world eventually took to the method because it worked. Starting in 1963, Mr. Suzuki regularly toured the United States with his Japanese students, stopping at the United Nations headquarters and Carnegie Hall. The Japanese government had little to do with this cross-cultural dissemination: Much of it was the work of Mr. Suzuki and his supporters, including Masaru Ibuka, Sony's co-founder and himself a great early-childhood education advocate. By the 1970s, the Suzuki Method had become a worldwide phenomenon. Even in remote areas of India and Indonesia, places with no properly trained music teachers, people were learning to play instruments on their own, thanks to Suzuki-compiled repertoires of incremental difficulty.
世界上的其他地方最終採用了鈴木教學法，因爲它效果很好。從1963年開始，鈴木鎮一多次帶着日本學生到美國交流，還去過聯合國總部和卡內基音樂廳。對於這種跨文化傳播活動，日本政府幾乎沒有參與，大部分工作都是鈴木鎮一及其支持者開展的。其中包括索尼公司聯合創始人井深大(Masaru Ibuka)，他本人就是著名的兒童早期教育倡導者。到了20世紀70年代，鈴木教學法已經在全球遍地開花。就連在印度和印度尼西亞的一些偏遠地區，雖然缺乏訓練有素的音樂教師，人們也可以使用鈴木鎮一編排的難度遞增的曲譜，自學樂器演奏。

In June 1979, when President Jimmy Carter visited Japan with his family, his daughter Amy had a group lesson with Mr. Suzuki's niece, Hiroko Suzuki (the current president of the Talent Education Research Institute). At a time of heightening U.S.-Japanese trade friction, the episode marked a diplomatic success. Yet Mr. Suzuki was unsuccessful in his attempts to convince successive Japanese prime ministers to incorporate his approach in public education. In Japan, his method continued to be seen as a program for the exceptionally gifted.
1979年6月，時任美國總統吉米·卡特(Jimmy Carter)攜家人訪問日本。他的女兒埃米(Amy)和鈴木鎮一的侄女鈴木裕子（Hiroko Suzuki，才能教育研究會的現任會長）一起參加了一堂集體課。在美日貿易摩擦不斷加劇的時期，這件事標誌着一個外交勝利。然而，鈴木鎮一卻未能說服日本歷屆首相，把自己的方法納入公共教育。日本人仍然認爲，鈴木教學法適合培養天賦秉異的學生。

Japan's long failure to claim as its own a globally attractive philosophy like Mr. Suzuki's reveals its chronic inability to see what is “cool” about itself.
長久以來，日本都未能宣揚本國具有全球吸引力的理念，鈴木鎮一的教學法就是一個例子。這暴露了日本在看清自己究竟哪些地方“酷”方面的長期無能。

This stands in stark contrast to Venezuela's publicly funded music education program El Sistema. That method also celebrates the idea that music can change the lives of children from diverse backgrounds. The parallel is not surprising since Takeshi Kobayashi brought the Suzuki Method to Venezuela in the late 1970s, teaching a group of underprivileged children to play in an orchestra. But unlike the Japanese government, the Venezuelan government has consistently funded this cultural endeavor since the mid-1970s.
這與委內瑞拉政府資助的音樂教育計劃“El Sistema”形成了鮮明的對比。該方法也主張，音樂可以改變孩子們的生活，無論他們的背景如何。它與鈴木鎮一的理念相類似。這並不奇怪，因爲上世紀70年代末，小林武史(Takeshi Kobayashi)把鈴木教學法帶到了委內瑞拉，幫助那裏的弱勢兒童組成樂隊，演奏音樂。但與日本政府不同的是，委內瑞拉政府自70年代中期開始，就一直在爲這種文化事業提供資助。

The El Sistema movement is even making inroads in Japan. The Soma Children's Orchestra and Chorus was established after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami ravaged the northeastern part of Japan, to encourage children there to make music communally. Now Japanese are taking up El Sistema: They recognize the merits of the method because it is dressed in exotic garb, unaware that it has long been in their midst.
El Sistema運動甚至開始進駐日本了。2011年日本東北部遭遇地震和海嘯災難之後，爲了鼓勵孩子們一起演奏音樂，El Sistema推動成立了相馬市兒童管絃樂與合唱團(Soma Children's Orchestra and Chorus)。現在，日本正在擁抱El Sistema的理念：他們之所以認識到這個方法的優點，是因爲它具有異域風情，卻不知道它早就在自己身邊。