While continued research is clearly indicated, progress thus far has been encouraging. I look forward to oral surgery in the 21st century with keen anticipation.
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Updated January 25, 1997
Towards the 21st Century -- An Oral-Communicative Approach
Kansai Time Out, APRIL 1993
Translator's note:
Dr. Hamaguchi is a graduate of the Tezukayama Institute of Oral Surgery. He first attracted a measure of public attention with his charming and instructive book on dental care for children, We're the Toothbrush Gang (Bokutachi wa Haburashizoku: 1982). It was not however, until the publication of The Japanese Mouth (Nihonjin no Kuchi:1987) in which Dr. Hamaguchi argues that the Japanese mouth is a unique anatomical structure peculiar to the Japanese people, that he achieved the status he presently enjoys. "Towards the 21st Century "serves as a preface to the English edition of Mouth which is slated for publication this fall.
The preface contains a description of the "Lompoc Awakening., the insight which altered the course of Dr. Hamaguchi's professional career. Also included are a summary of his research methods, his more startling findings and his proposals for the internationalization of Japanese society. "Towards the 21st Century" by Dr. Hamaguchi Makoto, translated from the Japanese by Joseph La Penta.
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It is a great pleasure to see my work finally in English, as it allows me the opportunity to repay the debt of gratitude I owe to all those foreigners, living and dead, who have offered so many of the hints that have led to my insight into the physical peculiarities that set the Japanese off from other peoples. We Japanese tend to be so involved in ourselves and our immensely rich native culture that we often need the shock of a foreign point of view to see 'things Japanese' in a fresh light.
Many foreigners have, for example, been struck by our mysterious Japanese smile, the apparently unconscious habit among our women of covering the mouth when laughing, and the unique way we Japanese have of picking our teeth. Many have commented on the wide variety of Japanese sucking behaviors: the sucking of air through the teeth when confronted by a difficult problem, the carefully targeted sucking to dislodge particles stuck between the wide gaps of our Japanese teeth, and the enthusiasm with which we suck our noodles. On a deeper level, there is the famous difficulty we experience in learning foreign languages.
It is surprising to me that foreigners- and even many Japanese -have, in their attempts to explain these varied and apparently unrelated phenomena, either remained at the anecdotal level or strayed into epiphenomenal, philosophical or mentalistic realms, seeking answers in variations of brain structure or chasing sociolinguistic willo'-the- wisps, when the solution was literally right under their noses - the Japanese mouth itself.
This realization came to me in March, 1984, during the Eighth International Conference on Oral Prosthetics in Lompoc, California. I had never been abroad before, much less addressed a room full of foreigners in English. As I stood at the podium about to deliver my paper on communicable gum disorders, I had the sensation that my tongue was swelling, filling my entire oral cavity and blocking my breathing. That is all I can remember but a colleague in the audience reports that I began to drool and tear at the knot of my necktie before I collapsed.
I woke to find myself back in my hotel room. With a terrible feeling of dryness in my throat, I stumbled into the bathroom to get a glass of water. Gazing blankly into the mirror above the sink, I raised the glass to my lips, when suddenly a light like the dawning sun bursting over the Pacific horizon seemed to explode behind my eyes. The isolated insights of a lifetime instantly fell into place; I realized that my mouth, itself, was my Achilles' heel.
As a scientist, I knew that in order to demonstrate the truth of my intuition I needed hard facts. After considerable research I developed the Uni Oral Calibrator, so-called for its resemblance to the sea urchin (uni in Japanese). The U.O.C. is made of a "living" plastic capable of nearly infinite deformations. It is covered with spine-like protrusions, each of which is implanted with a sensor capable of measuring a broad spectrum of oral phenomena. When placed in the mouth, the UOC expands to fill the entire oral cavity, transmitting its raw data to a computer and video system for comprehensive digital instant analysis.
Briefly, my research supports the following conclusion: native-born Japanese who have been raised in Japan on a predominantly Japanese diet and have not been exposed to foreign languages, have oral structures that are uniform, and that vary significantly from individuals not similarly born, raised, fed or unexposed. Of course, my findings do not refer to any individual Japanese mouth; it is the relative proportions of Japanese oral structures that differs in a statistically significant way from those of foreigners. I must admit that at this stage my foreign sample is rather limited. Many prospective foreign subjects have been repelled by the thought of placing the Uni Oral Calibrator in their mouths. I am at present field testing versions of the UOC, shaped like doughnuts and hot dogs. which I hope foreigners will find more acceptable.
I was quick to realize that my findings held out the possibility that certain surgical measures might prove beneficial to Japanese students of foreign languages. As originally conceived, the alteration of Japanese oral structures would allow for mastery of foreign languages, while ensuring the subject a statistically acceptable Japanese mouth. Initial experimental results on adult subjects, however, were not altogether successful. On the one hand, although the latest techniques were employed, the reconstruction of fully mature tissue -repositioning the dentation, building up or reducing hard or soft palates, lengthening the tongue, etc. - was a painful, time-consuming process. On the other hand, though the subjects were finally able to speak English like natives, their pronunciation of Japanese was so horribly slurred as to render them virtually incomprehensible. It is now clear that surgical strategy must aim at developing bilingual oral structures, and is indicated for young children, whose mouths are far more receptive to long-term corrective intervention. I am currently supervising pilot surgicopedagogical programs at certain clinics in the Tokyo and Osaka areas. I strongly recommend that parents who wish to prepare their youngsters for the international society of the 21st century seriously consider enrolling them well before the appearance of permanent teeth.
For adults, prosthesis appears to be a most promising direction. I am now at work on the prototype of a device that I hope will be able to simulate the inner environment of an English-speaking mouth, and can be inserted and removed easily, much like a set of dentures. At this stage, however, research subjects continue to experience some difficulty breathing and eating with the device in place. Moreover, in situations like simultaneous interpretation, where alternation between Japanese and English requires the rapid, repeated insertion and extraction of the device, subjects in trial tests have so far experienced damage to delicate gum tissues and excessive, cosmetically unacceptable salivation.
While continued research is clearly indicated, progress thus far has been encouraging. I look forward to oral surgery in the 21st century with keen anticipation.
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Updated January 25, 1997
