For Japanese Math Wizards, It's a Mind Game

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.
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