One would think it only natural that sign language be the main means of communicating and teaching at schools for the hearing-impaired, but in Japan the spoken word generally comes first.
Late last month, 43 deaf children and 64 of their parents submitted a petition to the Japan Federation of Bar Associations in which they claimed that their children's right to education was being infringed upon because school lessons are not given in Japanese sign language.
Japanese sign language, which has a different grammatical structure from spoken Japanese, is the natural language for most people who were born deaf or lost their hearing before acquiring Japanese-language skills, according to Midori Okamoto, one of the parents who submitted the petition.