Educational Alert Issued: Japan Falls from World's Top IQ Ranking, Facing Crisis of "Mother Tongue Collapse"

Footprints, a university entrance exam prep school specializing in Japanese language, located in Iwate Prefecture and led by Nagayuki Tanimura, issues an alert regarding the current state of Japanese language education. They link the decade-long reinforcement of English education, which began in elementary schools in 2011 (for 5th-6th graders) and 2020 (for 3rd graders), to a continuous decline in Japan's international English proficiency ranking. Furthermore, in 2025, Japan lost its long-held position as the world's top IQ country, ceding it to Taiwan. Footprints attributes these declines to a lack of absolute reading volume in the native language, leading to reduced reading comprehension and contextual inference abilities. They draw a parallel with the rapid evolution of AI through Large Language Models (LLMs), which derive meaning from context, suggesting that Japanese education needs to reconstruct "contextual inference ability" through reading and writing. The article highlights that specialists from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Keio University, and Sophia University had warned against overly early English education in 2006, stating, "Foreign language ability cannot exceed native language ability," and these concerns have been validated by current statistics. Teachers in the field report students struggling with mathematical and English comprehension due to an inability to understand question texts or contextual relationships. University professors observe an increase in students producing contradictory statements in their graduation theses. Footprints' coaching policy for university entrance exams emphasizes "contextual inference ability" (reading comprehension), noting that successful candidates for difficult universities acquire this through extensive practice. They assert that AI's rapid evolution is due to LLMs acquiring this same "contextual inference ability" through massive text reading, similar to the Japanese cultural concept of "reading the air." The article quotes Google's AI, Gemini, questioning why humans are regressing to memorizing symbols when AI focuses on context. Footprints' "Modern Japanese / Essay Parallel Practice 2-Way Method" is introduced as an efficient way to build this ability by combining reading (summarizing) and writing (structuring arguments), a method akin to traditional Japanese "Terakoya" education. The school aims to pass on the "footprints" of successful students to the next generation.