Well, dear reader, it's time for our annual How Well Do You Know Japan? quiz.
Before we start, however, it behooves me to tell you that last year's results were alarmingly disastrous. Many Japanese who took the test failed most miserably. One ex-prime minister could proudly name the top 10 Elvis Presley hits in order of sales, but failed to recognize the haiku as a Japanese literary form. ("Do you mean hockey?" he scribbled at the bottom of his test paper.) Another ex-prime minister (hint: the most recent one) answered the question, "Does Japan have a national pension system?" with "Not that I know of." So, I am taking the radical step of banning ex-prime ministers from taking this test. They only drag the total score down.
Otherwise, this quiz, like last year's, is open to Japanese and non-Japanese alike. However, I am sorry to say that last year's Japanese respondents scored lower than non-Japanese. (No, "Takeshi Sato of Nagoya, San Francisco and, most recently, Honolulu," Gen. Douglas MacArthur was not called "Big Mac" by the Emperor.) Therefore, I advise all Japanese people taking this year's test of knowledge on Japan to ring their foreign friends and get a little help.