{"id":8044,"date":"2021-09-28T08:14:39","date_gmt":"2021-09-28T08:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TheNextWeb=1368307"},"modified":"2021-09-28T08:14:39","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T08:14:39","slug":"think-the-fax-machine-is-dead-not-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=8044","title":{"rendered":"Think the fax machine is dead? Not in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With Japan riding the crest of its postwar economic miracle, Sony chairman Akio Morita and Japan\u2019s Minister of Transport Shintar\u014d Ishihara unleashed a manifesto<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The document, published in 1989, contained a prophecy that propelled it to domestic bestseller status, and into the concerned hands of officials at the CIA.<\/p>\n

At the time, the authors noted, the American and Soviet superpowers had become \u201cdependent on the initiative of the Japanese people\u201d in developing new technology, as exemplified by the country\u2019s dominant production of semiconductor chips. For Morita and Ishihara, this signalled \u201cthe end of modernity developed by Caucasians\u201d and the emergence of \u201can era of new genesis\u201d led by Japanese technological supremacy.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2021, and Japan\u2019s high-tech image<\/a> is peeling away. \u201cJapan needs a software update<\/a>\u201d, the New York Times tells us. The country\u2019s octogenarian IT minister, Naokazu Takemoto, has been mocked<\/a> for his inability to maintain a functioning website. Japan, it seems, is lagging behind<\/a> in the global race to digitise, despite being the home of Panasonic and Mitsubishi, of bullet trains and neon-lit urban life.<\/p>\n

And nowhere is this better symbolised than in the country\u2019s ongoing love affair with the fax machine<\/a>. The 20th-century technology is still a fixture in many Japanese offices, where there remains an insistence on paper documents bearing personal seals<\/a>. But rather than asking why Japanese businesses have patiently stood by their buzzing fax machines, perhaps we should really be asking: why do we find it so surprising? Why do representations equating Japan to high technologies persist so tenaciously, despite evidence to the contrary?<\/p>\n

An obvious culprit is \u201ctechno-orientalism<\/a>\u201d. One application of the term orientalism has been in describing the romanticisation of the east, in the eyes of the west, as a place of exoticism and mystical wisdom. Japan\u2019s booming microelectronics industry opened a new possibility for orientalist fantasy: techno-orientalism, or the idea that the east could represent an exotic, technoscientific future. Think here of how neon-lit Tokyo helped inspire Blade Runner\u2019s aesthetic and Neuromancer\u2019s television-coloured skies.<\/p>\n

But look further back, and there\u2019s a deeper history, entangled with modern imperialism, that feeds into our idea of contemporary Japan. The fantasy of advanced technological development has long been fundamental to defining Japanese national identity \u2013 as \u201cmodern\u201d, relative to both its Asian neighbours and the west.<\/p>\n

Japanese identity<\/h2>\n

It was no accident that when Akio and Shintar\u014d spoke in 1989 of Japan\u2019s rise, they framed it as \u201cthe end of modernity developed by Caucasians\u201d. Japan entered the modern international order staring down the barrels<\/a> of cannons mounted on American steamships. In negotiating the country\u2019s opening, western imperial powers impressed upon Japan their overwhelming mechanical might, reinforced by an \u201cideology of dominance based on technology<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

In response, technological development became the cornerstone of Japan\u2019s national agenda. As encapsulated in slogans such as \u201coitsuke oikose<\/a>\u201d \u2013 \u201ccatch up and overtake\u201d \u2013 the goal was to create native industries, infrastructure and military capacity that would eventually offer Japan parity with, or even superiority over, the west.<\/p>\n

This \u201ctechno-nationalism\u201d also served as a fundamental motive for Japan\u2019s imperial expansion. By the late 1930s, Japanese engineers referred to their work in the puppet state of Manchuria (an area covering Northeastern China and parts of neighbouring Russia) as \u201cgijutsu h\u014dkoku<\/a>\u201d, or \u201cservice to the country through technology\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of Japan\u2019s earliest and most significant investments in faxing occurred in 1936, on the occasion of that year\u2019s Berlin Olympics. A telephotographic network was established between Tokyo and Berlin to transmit not only pictures of the event, but also an illustrated photo letter from Hitler to Nippon Electric<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shortly after, in 1941, the Japanese Planning Agency outlined a vision<\/a> of how Japanese engineering combined with raw materials from its Asian empire might create an autonomous zone free from domination by Western technologies. Foreshadowing the words of Morita and Ishihara half a century later, this vision of a \u201cnew order\u201d intersected with broader wartime debates about how Japan might \u201covercome modernity\u201d \u2013 a term largely understood to be synonymous with overcoming the West<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reality bites<\/h2>\n

This national fantasy, a projection of what Japan could or should become at the level of state and industry, persisted through Japan\u2019s 1980s technological ascendancy \u2013 just as the fax machine was enjoying its heyday. But the exuberant postwar bubble would burst.<\/p>\n

During the \u201clost decade\u201d of the 1990s, Japan\u2019s economy entered a recession, then shrank. An ageing population and marked gender and income inequality became the matter of daily headlines. From this perspective, slow digitalisation is merely one index of a general malaise gripping the country since the end of its economic miracle. Nevertheless, even as the gap between fantasy and reality widened, Japan\u2019s high-tech image remained an integral part of the popular imagination.<\/p>\n

The persistence of this image in the face of contradictory evidence is less surprising given how technological prowess has been a fundamental part Japanese national identity for over a century. If renewed attention on Japan\u2019s love affair with the fax machine tells us anything, it\u2019s perhaps less that Japan is mired in the pre-digital past, but rather that the age when Japan defined its relation to modernity through advanced technology may be coming to an end.\"The<\/p>\n

This article by Hansun Hsiung<\/a>, Assistant Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University<\/a>, is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Japan riding the crest of its postwar economic miracle, Sony chairman Akio Morita and Japan\u2019s Minister of Transport Shintar\u014d Ishihara unleashed a manifesto. The document, published in 1989, contained a prophecy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8044"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}