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All the Japan apologists in this thread.
Japan has the second-lowest English literacy rate in all of Asia, only beating North Korea. The causes are their horribly backwards education system which is controlled by government ideologues (the government controls, among other things, ALL textbooks which can be used in schools, with which power it prevents modern language teaching methods from permeating schools and censors information which goes against nihonjinron) and a culture which is apathetic to world events such that your average Japanese person makes a fly-over state American look worldly by comparison.
The fact that, despite being the third-largest world economy and long-time ally of the US, the majority of Japanese businesses and politicians are unable to speak the lingua franca of the business world has nothing to do with "English is hard :(" or "Japanese folded 1000 times engrish no useful", it's a symptom of structural problems within Japan's cultural, educational, and political spheres.