[StangGuy]

I could see doing it for only one reason, and that is a greater relevance amongst the international science community. I have seen it said in a couple different places that despite Japan's large science and technology community they have a relatively small presence at international confrences and generate a small number of technical papers. The reason given for this is the poor english skills of Japanese scientists and engineers. English is the defacto language of scientific communication and usually the required language for presentations and papers. By making English an official language of Japan the english literacy would increase and so would the Japanese presence at international scientific events.