Customer Reviews

The Japanese Abacus: Its Use and Theory

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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This is one of the few books about how to use an abacus around. Even though there aren't that many books out there, Kojima does a very good job of explaining how to use the abacus, in a step by step manner. The book starts off with a brief history of the abacus then proceeds to how to use it for addition, subtraction, multiplication and then division. The book also goes into cube roots! The book also has some simple tests after each chapter and at the end of the book to see how much you have improved. All in all the book is very well written and if you have any interest in the abacus, this is a good book to have.

This book goes through addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division on the abacus, explaining clearly how to do each. It builds up the proper finger movements bit by bit through very clear examples. You really can just read this book and learn the proper modern methods for the Japanese abacus. It also has some interesting history at the beginning, and tests at the end to allow the reader to rate himself according to first few ranks in the Japanese kyu system... Great book -- I use it all the time. ^_^

Kojima's book is short, but teaches nearly everything you need to add, subtract, multiply, and divide on the Japanese soroban. Missing is how to handle negative numbers when adding and subtracting. (Perhaps this is covered in Kojima's advanced book.) The other review is correct to say that what Kojima teaches can be applied to the Chinese suan pan. The exercises are a valuable part of the book. Mental calculation is presented, but the use of "abacus thinking" for paper calculations is absent. It would be nice to see this book in print again.

If you want a book on how to use a Japanese abacus this is the bible for it. I see other books written that have not been properly researched and really teach usage technique wrong. If you really want to learn how to use a Soroban or even a Chinese Suan Pan this is the book to get. The challanges listed between the Soroban and calculator were before the days of modern pocket calculators but with practice you can still get real fast. Practice the exercises in this book and you can rely on a Soroban just like a pocket calculator. If you have a 2/5 Chinese Suan Pan don't worry this still applies. Actually the 2/5 was developed for the Chinese weight system that was based on 16. It's actually a hexidecimal calculator! If you do computer hex math a 2/5 might actually be very helpful! The 1/4 and 2/5 refer to the number of beads on the top and bottom. Top beads count as 5 and bottom as 1.