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Japan may be able to make computers but it is failing to make the best
use of them, according to two leaked government documents. Japan’s Ministry
of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Post and
Telecommunications say outdated laws and regulations are standing in the
way of progress.

An internal MITI document says Japan is ‘far behind’ the US in computerisation,
especially of the public sector. About 10 per cent of Japanese office workers
have computers, compared with 50 per cent in the US. Workers in Japan still
tend to write documents by hand.

A similar picture emerges from a draft report for the Ministry of Posts
and Telecommunications. The gap between computer use in the two countries
is so great that the Japanese economy will end up in a ‘precarious position’
in the next century, says the report. Personal computers have penetrated
5.7 per cent of the potential market in Japan, compared with 15.8 per cent
in the US. Only 8.6 per cent of Japanese computers are linked to local area
networks, compared with 52 per cent in the US. Both reports were ‘officially
leaked’ to the Japanese press. The telecommunications ministry says it would
be ‘inappropriate’ to comment until the report is published.

The telecommunications ministry has long advocated a plan to link every
Japanese household with fibre-optic cables by the year 2010, but has failed
to set up a method for financing the scheme or secured the agreement of
other ministries. MITI and the telecommunications ministry blame the slow
pace of computerisation on overregulation and government bureaucrats protecting
their positions.

Commercial laws forbid company directors from holding board meetings
over teleconferencing links, for example. And the education ministry restricts
home education programmes – which could be delivered remotely once a fibre-optic
network is in place. Likewise, the health ministry forbids medical checkups
at home.

Even NEC, which boasts 50 per cent of the Japanese personal computer
market, has had problems getting its staff to adapt to computers. Managers
at NEC, as in all Japanese companies, are used to stamping their approval
on memos with a hanko, or chop. Doing this to an electronic document is
impossible, so NEC devised a method of allowing managers to ‘stamp’ computer
memos with an electronic tag.

‘It took us ages to decide that these computer documents had as much
validity as a paper document,’ says Mark Pearce of NEC. ‘The use of paper
is a cultural thing in Japan. It’s very important to have the physical document
in your hand.’

Pearce agrees that part of the problem lies with conservatism within
the government. ‘In a society where the bureaucracy has so much power, they
won’t let go whether you have a computer revolution or not. If a new technology
crosses over the division between their boundaries, there’s going to be
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