Japanese

Technology
A brief overview of things

技術

By
Adhyan Mall
(RA1811003010051)
Few places have done more than Japan to define today’s
technological landscape. The laptops we all work from?
Toshiba was the first to produce them for a mass market.
The emoji you used in your last email? Also a Japanese
invention. In fact, according to a Forbes analysis, Japan is
home to almost 10% of the world’s most innovative
companies.
And yet Japan’s creative prowess is all too often overlooked,
with most people instead focusing on places like Silicon
Valley or Tel Aviv. As these few innovations show, that’s a
mistake – Japan has given the world far more than karaoke,
Pokémon and instant ramen noodles.
The Statistics
So what exactly is advanced technology? Spectacular
breakthroughs in creating new products certainly count but,
in nation-to-nation competition, new products rarely provide
as much of an edge as is generally believed. This is because
they can often be quickly copied by foreign competitors.
More important are breakthroughs in production
technologies. These often enable a nation powerfully to boost
its efficiency in long established products. An example is
Japan’s success in using robots to reduce costs in the car
industry.

As for evidence that Japan is doing better than the United

States overall, Sekora cites the two nations’ respective
performances in international trade.U.S. trade in industrial
goods has consistently weakened over the years with the
result that America ran a current account deficit of $411
billion in 2014. By contrast, with continuing strong exports of
high-technology products (particularly to nations like China,
Taiwan, and Korea, whose most advanced industries are
heavily dependent on Japanese-made components,
materials and production equipment), Japan earned a current
account surplus of $22 billion last year. This was all the more
impressive for the fact that because of an aging population,
the Japanese workforce has declined by nearly 20 percent
since 1989. By contrast America’s weak trade performance
came despite a consistently rising workforce in the same
period.

The Walkman {1979}

Think the iPod revolutionized the music industry? Wrong.

When Apple’s product hit the market in 2001, the revolution
was already well under way, thanks to a Japanese invention
that came decades earlier: Sony’s Walkman.
Before the Walkman, the only way to listen to music on the
go was by using a portable radio. The idea that you could
pick your own tunes and listen to them everywhere would
transform the music industry. “Mobility – the concept that
you could take music with you – was huge,”Americus Reed
of Wharton told AdWeek.

Astonishing Array Of Vending

Machines

In the big metropolises of Japan you are never more than

two blocks from a vending machine. They are usually found
in pairs but sometimes also in long banks of a dozen or
more. They sell all the traditional items you would expect
such as refreshing beverages (soda, water, tea, milk, juice,
beer…essentially everything liquid) and cigarettes (requires
scan of a Japanese ID to dispense product) to other more
unconventional items including ramen, electronics,
umbrellas, even underwear and ties.

Robotics

In the area of industrial robotics, Japan has continuously

maintained its position as the world's top exporter of robots
in terms of value of shipments and number of operating
units. Japan shipped approximately 3.4 billion yen's worth of
robots in 2012, comprising nearly 50% of the global market
share. The number of operating units in Japan was close to
300,000, which was about 23% of the global market share.

Japan leads the world in the field of robotics with highly

competitive research, development and applied technologies.
Further progress is being made in robotics so that Japan can
become a creator of new values in monozukuri and services,
as well as a base for creating robots that will contribute to
the transformation of society.

The Bullet Train {1964}

Before the Hikari No. 1 was launched in October 1964,

travelling by train between Tokyo and Osaka – Japan’s two
largest cities – would take the best part of a working day. But
with a top speed of 210 kph, the world’s first bullet train
reduced the journey to 4 hours. Today, thanks to further
technological developments, the trip takes just over 2
hours,soon to be reduced to around an hour.
Gaming Consoles

Video gaming in Japan is a major industry. Japanese game

development is often identified with the golden age of video
games, including Nintendo under Shigeru Miyamoto and
Hiroshi Yamauchi, Sega during the same time period, Sony
Computer Entertainment when it was based in Tokyo, and
other companies such as Taito, Namco, Capcom, Square
Enix, Konami, NEC, and SNK, among others.
VHS {1977}

VHS (short for Video Home System) is a standard for

consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes.
Developed by Victor Company of Japan (JVC) in the early
1970s, it was released in Japan on September 9, 1976 and
in the United States on August 23, 1977.
From the 1950s, magnetic tape video recording became a
major contributor to the television industry, via the first
commercialized video tape recorders(VTRs). At that time, the
devices were used only in expensive professional
environments such as television studios and medical
imaging (fluoroscopy). In the 1970s, videotape entered home
use, creating the home video industry and changing the
economics of the television and movie businesses. The
television industry viewed videocassette recorders (VCRs) as
having the power to disrupt their business, while television
users viewed the VCR as the means to take control of their
hobby.

3D PRINTING

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making

three dimensional solid objects from a digital file.
The creation of a 3D printed object is achieved using additive
processes. In an additive process an object is created by
laying down successive layers of material until the object is
created. Each of these layers can be seen as a thinly sliced
horizontal cross-section of the eventual object.
3D Printing is being actively used in the field of prosthetics,
weaponry, architecture, textile and medicine proving to be
the most rapidly growing industrial market around the globe.

Conclusion

The study of comparative national innovation strategies

presents formidable challenges. In this book, we have
described a wide variety of government, corporate and
academic initiatives designed to advance Japan’s
competitive position and to create the foundations for a 21st
century economy. The individual initiatives – from massive
science cities to pet robots and the mobile Internet revolution
– are fascinating but far from definitive proof that Japan is,
indeed, the most innovative nation in the world. Statistics on
government and corporate expenditures on research and
development are instructive but only part of a complex story.
So, too, is the substantial revamping of the Japanese
university system, and the domestic use of mobile Internet.
Major commitments to basic science research show that
Japan is hedging its bets on the future directions of science
and is, more aggressively than other countries, exploring the
commercial possibilities of nanotechnology and
biotechnology. It is an important, and even impressive,
account of a nation’s zeal of science and technology.