The Washington Post
By Ginny Parker, Dec 15, 2000

For Japanese Math Wizards, It's a Mind Game; Contestants Test Skill on Invisible
Abacus

The contestants sit hunched over bare tables, some in sweat shirts, some in
neckties. A small audience watches quietly, while judges pace the floor.

Suddenly, a teenager's had shoots up and 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.

Today, despite computers and calculators, the technique survives as a strenuous
workout for the brain. Teachers say almost anyone can master it, although it
takes hours of practice, mental dexterity and extraordinary 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 figure out the quotient of
992.587318 divided by 5,647.723.

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, subtraction and long division.

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 1, 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
abacuses 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: addition and subtraction, multiplication,
division and bookkeeping in which students calculate numbers written on a stack
of paper.

Instructors say there's a benefit to such mental acrobatics besides money saved
on calculator batteries.

Students who master anzan, they insist, tend to excel not only in math, but in
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 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 can be useful in
nonmathematical situation, 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.

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 such as 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 heads. 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 such as flower arranging or calligraphy, replaced
by piano lessons, baseball games and English classes.

"People used to need the abacus to get a job," Takayanagi said. "Now it's just
a brain exercise."