Think the fax machine is dead? Not in Japan
Fax machines are still a fixture in Japanese offices
Japanese identity
It was no accident that when Akio and Shintarō spoke in 1989 of Japan’s rise, they framed it as “the end of modernity developed by Caucasians”. Japan entered the modern international orderstaring down the barrelsof cannons mounted on American steamships. In negotiating the country’s opening, western imperial powers impressed upon Japan their overwhelming mechanical might, reinforced by an “ideology of dominance based on technology”.
In response, technological development became the cornerstone of Japan’s national agenda. As encapsulated in slogans such as “oitsuke oikose” – “catch up and overtake” – the goal was to create native industries, infrastructure and military capacity that would eventually offer Japan parity with, or even superiority over, the west.
This “techno-nationalism” also served as a fundamental motive for Japan’s 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 “gijutsu hōkoku”, or “service to the country through technology”.
One of Japan’s earliest and most significant investments in faxing occurred in 1936, on the occasion of that year’s Berlin Olympics. A telephotographic network was established between Tokyo and Berlin to transmit not only pictures of the event, but also an illustrated photo letterfrom Hitler to Nippon Electric.
Shortly after, in 1941, the Japanese Planning Agencyoutlined a visionof 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 “new order” intersected with broader wartime debates about how Japan might “overcome modernity” – a term largely understood to be synonymous withovercoming the West.
Reality bites
This national fantasy, a projection of what Japan could or should become at the level of state and industry, persisted through Japan’s 1980s technological ascendancy – just as the fax machine was enjoying its heyday. But the exuberant postwar bubble would burst.
During the “lost decade” of the 1990s, Japan’s 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’s high-tech image remained an integral part of the popular imagination.
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’s love affair with the fax machine tells us anything, it’s 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.
This article byHansun Hsiung, Assistant Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures,Durham University, is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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