許多日本人對於「便便文化」有著近乎執著的喜愛，日本商家經常會推出一些便便形狀的惡搞商品吸引顧客，比如「便便美食」、「便便筆記本」等獵奇商品。最近，有日本出版商甚至把便便應用在了日文漢字教材中，以此激發小學生學習漢字的興趣。這本《便便漢字練習簿》不僅問題和例句離不開便便，甚至連練習寫漢字的空格都是可愛的便便形狀。
| Unko Kanji Doriru. Photograph: Bunkyosha |
As many Japanese parents and teachers will attest, getting young children to write and memorise hundreds of kanji characters can be a thankless task.
讓小朋友書寫和記憶幾百個「日文漢字」是一項艱巨的任務，許多日本家長和老師對此都有同感。
But a new series of study books has generated a surge in interest in stroke order, radicals and alternative pronunciations – all thanks to an enduring obsession among children of a certain age: poo.
但是，一套全新的練習簿激發了他們對筆畫順序、偏旁以及不同發音的興趣，而這一切多虧了這個年紀的小朋友情有獨鐘的「便便」。
Scatology-based study in the form of the Unko Kanji Doriru (poo kanji drill) has proved enormously popular among the country's primary school pupils, with their parents' blessing, since the series of books appeared in March.
如家長所願，《便便漢字練習簿》系列叢書自3月面世以來已經證明，這種用便便學漢字的形式在日本小學生中非常受歡迎。
The drills, complete with tips from Professor Poo – an emoji-like turd with glasses and a handlebar moustache – have so far sold 1.83m copies.
目前為止，這套練習簿已經銷售了183萬冊，書中做指導的「便便教授」是一個留著八字鬍、帶著眼鏡的表情形象。
"I want to make boring study more fun," the publisher, Shuji Yamamoto, told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
「我想讓枯燥的學習變得更有意思」，《便便漢字練習簿》書出版商山本修司對《每日新聞報》表說。
Yamamoto, a 40-year-old former Lehman Brothers employee who founded his own publishing company seven years ago, said: "I'm an extremely ordinary person. So I know what most ordinary people want. I know what is likely to sell."
現年40歲的山本曾是雷曼兄弟銀行的員工，7年前他創辦了自己的出版公司，他說：「我是一個非常普通的人。所以我知道大多數普通人想要什麼。我清楚什麼可以賣出去。」
Written Japanese comprises 2,136 "regular-use" Chinese-based characters – or kanji – and the hiragana and katakana phonetic scripts. Hiragana is made up of 46 base characters that are often used as particles or to inflect verbs and adjectives. The same number of basic katakana symbols are commonly used to write foreign loan words.
日文中包括2136個「常用」的日文漢字、平假名和片假名音標，46個平假名通常用作小品詞或修飾動詞和形容詞。片假名也有46個，通常用於外來詞彙中。
Japan's children – among the most numerate and literate in the world – are supposed to be able to read and write 1,006 kanji after six years of primary school education, starting at age 6. To help them reach that goal, and prepare them for memorising the remaining 1,130 characters before they complete their formal education at 15, the book includes the word "poo" in every one of its 3,018 sample sentences.
日本兒童的計算和讀寫能力在全球兒童中位居前列，他們從6歲開始接受小學教育，6年後要學會讀寫1006個日文漢字。為了幫助日本兒童實現這一目標，也為了幫助他們在15歲完成正規教育之前記住剩下的1130個日文漢字，《便便漢字練習簿》中的3018個例句全部包含了「便便」一詞。
"Adults may raise their eyebrows, but for children, the word 'poo' is magical and makes things fun," the book's author, Yusaku Furuya, told Kyodo news.
該書作者古屋優作對日本共同社表示，「成年人可能不喜歡，但是對孩子們來說，『便便』是一個神奇的詞，它讓每句話變得有趣。」
While the kanji are arranged thematically to aid memorisation, some of the example sentences border on the surreal. A drill used to teach the kanji for "meeting" reads: "We are starting a poo meeting now."
書中分主題編排漢字以幫助記憶，但是也有一些例句不符合現實。一道關於漢字「會議」的練習中寫道：「我們現在要開一個便便會議。」
Hinata Shibasaki, seven, is one of the many children who loathed rote learning at school but are now fully fledged kanji converts. "It's funny because poo appears everywhere," he told Kyodo. "I used to hate studying kanji, but I got hooked on this book."
許多討厭在學校死記硬背的孩子現在完全成了漢字迷，7歲的柴琦日向就是其中一員。他告訴共同社：「這本書好有趣，因為到處都是便便。我以前討厭學漢字，但是我被這本書迷住了。」
英文來源：衛報
翻譯&編輯：董靜
審校：yaning