Soroban (Japanese abacus) | Math as a popular culture

There are different traditional calculation tools in various places around the world, one of which is the Japanese abacus "Soroban". In this video, a soroban master who has taught for almost 40 years until now in Fukui City, one of Japanese local cities, is talking about the unique historical progress of arithmetic in Japan. According to him, Japanese arithmetic has reached great heights even among ordinary people before experiencing western civilization and this made one of great contributions to rapid modernization after the Meiji Restoration.