Japan: The World's Next Superpower

Awesome: 1 in 4 Japanese schoolchildren can't find North Korea on a map.

Can global dominance be far behind?

I always get a little sad when people point out how lousy American schoolkids are at finding other countries. It seems to suggest that our arrogance is so severe that we don't even care the rest of the world exists. It reeks of "pride cometh before a fall."

I was tickled to hear that we're not alone:

North Korea has menaced Japan with missiles, kidnapped its citizens and stands between it and a place in the soccer World Cup finals, but one in four Japanese high-school students can't place the country on a map.
Only 76 percent of high school pupils in a survey by an academic body could locate the reclusive communist state, despite a daily bombardment of news about it in the Japanese media.

But then I thought: Maybe I've been thinking about the whole issue backward. Maybe this kind of blissful disregard for basic geography, rather than a sign of decline, is somehow directly associated with a rise to global significance.

So now I say: Good for them. After decades of being well-known for excellent education and no more geopolitical influence than it takes to fill a tea ceremony cup, the Land of the Rising Sun is descending into the boorish, self-centered ignorance that has characterized the world's most recent superpower.

Besides, they'll be able to find North Korea when they look down from their moon base.

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Japan: The World's Next Superpower

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