In some Japanese elementary schools, a correct answer to a word problem can be marked wrong because the multiplication was written in the wrong order. In 2021, Tōyō Keizai Online described a case in Osaka in 1972. A child wrote 6 × 4 where the teacher expected 4 × 6. The answer was marked right and the expression wrong.
The national curriculum commentary says that the order of the two numbers should be respected when a problem about a number of equal groups is expressed as a formula. Asked by the magazine, the curriculum division of the Ministry of Education said that understanding what multiplication means is more important than the order. How to teach it, it added, also depends on each school.