Art of the Soroban

The numbers come flowing out Hideaki Oshima’s mouth like rainwater flowing over Akaka Falls after a storm:

"Fivetrilliononehundredthirtyninebillion­twohundredthirtyonemilliontwohundred­twentytwothousandfivehundredseventyfive plus twotrillionninehundredsixtyfivebillionfourhundred- fiftyninemillionninehundredeleventhousandtwo- hundredfiftytwo …"

That was just the beginning. Subtract one similarly long number, add another. Oshima looked at the three teenagers sitting beside him. "Did you get it?"

Instantly, one of them told him the answer, which in the interest of saving ink won’t be reprinted here. They had all gotten the answer using a "soro­ban," or Japa­nese abacus.

Oshima, a genial 54-year-old from Kyoto, Japan, is the sensei at the Araki Hiroya Soro­ban School in Moiliili, teaching kids as young as 5 how to use a soroban. In the process, his students are gaining confidence with numbers from small to humongous and improving their focus and concentration.

"It is a good educational device for all ages," said Oshima, who also gives sessions on soroban at schools on Oahu.

Beyond fingers and toes, the abacus might be considered the first calculator. Different cultures have their own form of the ancient counting tool.

The Japanese version, which is gaining popularity throughout Asia, consists of a long, rectangular rack divided in two sections by a reckoning bar. Four "earth" beads, each representing a unit of one, sit on one side of the bar, and one "heaven" bead, representing a unit of five, sits on the other.

The beads are moved back and forth to quickly add and subtract.

Multiplication and division essentially involve the same processes but are performed repeatedly and, with practice, so rapidly that calculations can be done as quickly as on a modern calculator.

While the push is on for kids to learn computer skills, Oshima said the soroban is an especially good math tool because it gives students a visual and tactile sense of numbers.

"They’re touching the beads, manipulating them," he said. "Manipulation requires using the brain a lot. … Punching a button, they don’t understand what the difference is from two or three. So if I tell them the answer’s not correct, they don’t know where they made a mistake. But if we follow the question with the soroban, we can find out where the mistake is."

His students say they’ve benefited from learning soroban. Jessica Lum, who will be a ninth-grader at Punahou School in the fall, has been learning soroban since she was 5.

"I remember in elementary school that I had a real easy time doing multiplication tables. I’d finish, like, two minutes before everyone else would, and no one would understand how I could do it," she said. "It definitely makes it easier."

Now she said she can solve algebraic equations — up to four digits — in her head.

"I just see the beads moving, and then I just do the math in my head instead of down here," she said, gesturing toward her soroban.

Oshima’s school is named for his mentor, Araki Hiroya, a master who sent him to Hawaii 31 years ago to start a school.

Oshima initially planned to stay for just two years, hoping to get experience so he could teach high school back in Japan, but he found his calling here.

"After two years, when I decided to leave, I had some soroban students," he said. "That’s why I had to decide whether to leave or stay awhile and teach, and finally I stayed."

The school retains some Japa­nese characteristics. Class begins with a formal greeting recited in Japa­nese by a young student before the group separates to work individually with Oshima and his instructors. Many of Oshima’s advanced students now teach at the school, and he hopes they will continue his work.

Learning soroban has provided some enlightening experiences for many of his students beyond the numbers. Many, like Scott Oka­mura, who now teaches there, went to Japan to compete in a national competition. (Soro­ban is taught to all Japa­nese primary school students, and many top corporations recruit from contest winners.) For Oka­mura the experience gave the notion of "number crunching" a new meaning.

"It was in a huge auditorium, dead silent, and all you could hear was the sound of the soro­ban clicking," he said. "It was pretty surreal; I got goose bumps just being there."

Okamura will be studying chemistry at the University of Hawaii in the fall and said his work with soro­ban "definitely" made his school work easier.

Oshima’s two sons, Lune and Emile, are both experts in soro­ban and math wizzes, with or without the ancient calculator. Yell out several long numbers to Lune, a student at Kalani High School, and he can add them up in his head.

His brother, a mechanical engineering major at Princeton University in New Jersey, is the first and only person outside of Japan to have attained a "dan," or rank, of 10, the highest possible.

Emile Oshima said soro­ban doesn’t play a direct role in his studies, but it has helped in other ways.

"We don’t use it for these big number calculations because obviously a computer is much faster," he said. "But our ability to concentrate and memorize things and think creatively and stuff like that, that is definitely coming from soro­ban."

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»The Araki Hiroya Soroban School is at 931 University Ave. Call 941-5708.

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