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Well another way to look at it. Japanese engineers get paid very poorly. If they spoke English they could easily leave the toxic Japanese work environment but they don't speak English or any other language so effectively they are prisoners of the only country that speaks their default language

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That is a big assumption. They would still need to get a work visa and have the desire to leave. There is a lot of culture at play as well, which would still be there if everyone in Japan was a native English speaker. English is certainly a valuable skill for traveling and moving abroad, but I hardly see Japanese people as trapped in their own country. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan there are 1.3 million Japanese citizens living abroad.

Unfortunately I could only find statistics information in Japanese.

http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/toko/page22_000043.html

http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/files/000162700.pdf (page 11)

I find it hard to believe Japanese engineers don't leave Japan because of the language. Perhaps most of them simply don't want to leave their country?

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