Aurelijus Zykas’ curiosity in distant languages led him to buy a Japanese dictionary. What eventually followed was a brush with Japanese royalty and appointment to his country’s highest diplomatic post in Japan.

Zykas, the Lithuanian ambassador to Japan, also created the world’s first Japanese-Lithuanian dictionary in the world. It contained around 70,000 words when it was released in 2016.

In addition to Japanese, Zykas has a good command of English, Russian, Spanish and Korean.

He told The Asahi Shimbun that learning a language allows people to gain a new perspective on the world.

The following are excerpts of the interview.

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Question: When did you get interested in learning languages?

Zykas: When I was in high school, just after Lithuania gained independence from the former Soviet Union. Because Lithuania is such a small country, people started to learn various other languages to survive, worrying that they couldn’t live only with their language.

I started to study English first and Spanish next by myself because I already had a good command of Lithuanian as well as Russian before Lithuania became independent.

Then, I gradually developed a dream to study languages of some faraway countries, languages with letters I didn’t even know.

I bought a Japanese dictionary at a used bookstore and studied little by little.

Q: What would have happened if it was a Chinese dictionary or an Arabic dictionary?

A: If so, I would have studied the language. So, it was just a coincidence that I was connected to the Japanese language. But many young people now study Japanese because they are fans of Japanese manga or anime.

GAINING A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Q: Was Japanese difficult?

A: The logic, the way of thinking and the word orders in Japanese are completely opposite from those of Lithuanian. It was difficult to speak Japanese fluently because I had to master them all.

Of course, the characters were also hard to study, as there are so many types: hiragana, katakana, kanji.

In addition, kanji have two different readings: “onyomi,” or the Chinese-derived reading, and “kunyomi,” or native Japanese-derived reading. I believe the language is among the most complex in the world.

Q: Was studying not a burden for you?

A: I love languages. Also, if you study a language, you gain a new perspective on the world. I love it the most. There were many difficulties, but I’m truly glad that I have managed to master Japanese.

Each language has a completely different world, such as the way it classifies things. In that sense, learning a language often exposes you to the country’s culture. I’ve always been impressed by how a language embodies its cultural perspectives.

For example, the Japanese word “aoi” not only means blue but sometimes also green, such as in traffic lights or for plants. In contrast, many Western languages classify blue and green into distinct categories.

On the other hand, Japanese has separate words for cold and hot water while English uses “water” to refer to both.

Like this, when the language is different, culture and ways of thinking become like a whole different world.

UNTRANSLATABLE WORDS ARE FAVORITE

Q: Do you have any favorite Japanese words?

A: I love words and expressions that are hard to translate into our language. For example, I love the word “mottainai” (what a waste). The concept of “mottainai” itself represents a fascinating aspect of Japanese culture to me.

Q: Are Lithuanians good at learning foreign languages?

A: Yes, I believe Lithuanians are eager to study foreign languages. That is partly because the country has not been independent for very long, and partly because Lithuanian is spoken by a limited number of people globally.

Children learn their first and second foreign languages at school. Depending on the school, they learn English, German, French, Russian, Spanish or Ukrainian. 

LARGE COUNTRIES BAD AT FOREIGN LANGUAGES 

Q: Japanese people are said to be bad at English. Why is that?

A: From our perspective, Japanese is a distant language, and in the same way, from a Japanese point of view, Western languages operate on fundamentally different concepts, which I believe makes them more difficult to learn.

Another reason is that Japan is a large country with relatively few opportunities to interact with foreign languages or foreigners. Even when it comes to youth culture, including music and manga, there’s no real need to use a foreign language. As long as you know Japanese, you can do anything in the country.

In that sense, people from large countries are generally not good at foreign languages. The United States is a good example, and Russia also tends to show this pattern.

Q: If you had not happened to study Japanese, maybe you would not have worked in Japan?

A: I was so surprised when the foreign ministry asked me if I could assume the position of ambassador to Japan. Because I had no diplomatic experience, I wondered if I could do the job.

However, I’ve found that my Japanese language skills are invaluable in my new role. While it’s possible to work with Japan’s Foreign Ministry in English, it becomes difficult on other occasions.

My knowledge of the Japanese language is extremely helpful especially when I travel to regional areas.

Q: There are other ambassadors who are fluent in Japanese like you, right?

A: We sometimes speak in Japanese. When we feel a slight disconnect while speaking in English, switching to Japanese sometimes helps us understand and persuade each other more easily. 

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Aurelijus Zykas was born in 1978 in Kaunas, Lithuania. After graduating from the Faculty of Arts at Vytautas Magnus University, he gained a Ph.D. in political science and has held various positions, including director of the university’s Center for Asian Studies.

He worked as an interpreter when then Emperor Akihito and then Empress Michiko visited Lithuania in 2007. He has also studied at Kanazawa University and Waseda University.

He has been ambassador to Japan since May 2022.