The Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant accident revealed serious problems with Japanese information communication systems. From a rhetorical viewpoint, the Japanese language starts to explain a situation from the beginning and leaves the outcome until the end. In traditional Japanese culture, the world is thought to move with the collective flow of nature, and all things are constantly in the process of change. Thus, self-assertion is not encouraged in Japan. The Japanese language itself is imbued with “vagueness,” possessing a wealth of vocabulary and expressions but often not being conducive to sending out a clear message. Unfortunately, under emergency circumstances, such as experienced in March 2011, serious problems can occur. In this paper, we examine the language used by researchers in science and engineering, where clarity is essential. We prepared the Japanese-English Corpus of Presentations in Science and Engineering (JECPRESE) of transcriptions of presentations given in Japanese and English by researchers. Our comparative analyses revealed that the “vagueness” in Japanese results from missing subjects and a lack of sensitivity for paragraph structure (idea frameworks), verb tense and mood. In order to send out a clear message, more effort needs to be made to be aware of the audience’ s viewpoint. Only in this way can the Japanese learn to speak out without “vagueness” as the world accelerates towards internationalization with the ever increasing need to send out clear messages.
