Technological

TECHNOLOGY IN JAPAN

car vending machine The Japanese invented canned coffee, instant noodles, karaoke, blue-light-
emitting diodes and the Walkman. Japan was a pioneer of MP3 technology. Sony and Phillips
co-developed the compact disc. In recent years, though, the Japanese have had a hard time
coming up with the next bid thing. It was Apple after all not Sony that came up with the Ipod and
Iphone.

Japanese are obsessed with the newest thing and the latest technology. Air conditioners are
controlled by remotes; televisions speak in English and Japanese; cars tell you where to go; and
robots are everywhere. In automated Japan, taxi doors open and close automatically, airports are
cleaned by vacuum cleaners that operate without human help and parking lots have talking
ticket-taking machines. Japanese scientists are currently trying to develop cars that can drive
themselves.

“In April 2012, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported the Chikyu, an 56,700-ton deep-sea drilling ship,
set a record for the deepest undersea research drill, reaching a depth of 7,740 meters in waters off
Miyagi Prefecture, the agency said, breaking the record of 7,049.5 meters set by a U.S. vessel in
the Mariana Trench in 1978. The Chikyu was at anchor about 220 kilometers off Oshika
Peninsula, Miyagi Prefecture, to research the focal regions on the seabed around the Japan
Trench, which is believed to have generated huge tsunami on March 11 last year. [Source:
Yomiuri Shimbun, April 29, 2012]

Japan's talent for monozukuri (“thing making”) has been a key to its success. In the old days,
Japanese thirst for new gadgets and new things kept the industry going. Consumers had the
money and the proclivity to snatch up new gizmos that they quickly tired of, desiring even newer
models, and a pool of engineers to keep them satisfied. Ideas that caught on were promoted in
overseas markets. These days Japanese hold on to their gadgets long and have lost some of their
enthusiasm for owning the newest thing. Consequently, sales have slackening in Japan and Japan
has lost some of its edge for coming up with cutting edge products.
Japan's aging population is widely seen as an obstacle to innovation. As the population gets older
and fewer young people are born there are less young people around to come up with fresh new
ideas and more cranky old people around to pooh pooh the fresh ideas that appear.

There are more engineers in Japan than the United States, even though the population of the U.S.
is twice that of Japan. Japan often leads the world in patents. Japanese scientists have filed more
patent applications for superconductors than the rest of the world combined. More than 600 have
come from Sumitomo Electric, Japan's leading manufacturer of electric wires and cables.

Japan produces more patents per capita than any other nation, almost twice as many as the
United States. Patent applications in 2004: 26,946 per 100,000, compared to 5,231 per 100,000
in Germany (highest in Europe). In 2004, Japan applied for more patent applications than other
countries according the World Intellectual Property Organization. It filed for 540,100 of the
1,599,000 applications worldwide. The United States had the second most with 346,300. South
Korea was third with 157,600. Japan was no. 1 again in the world in patent applications in 2005.
Japanese filed for 427,000 patents, the United States was second with 391,000.

R&D spending: 3.2 percent of GNP, compared to 2.7 percent in South Korea and 1.9 percent in
Taiwan.

Websites and Resources

EarthSimulator supercomputer Good Websites and Sources: Japan Science and Technology
Agency jst.go.jp/EN ; Japan Technology Information japantechniche.com ;Japan Advanced
Institute of Science of Technology jaist.ac.jp ; Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation
jiii.or.jp/english ;Statistical Handbook of Japan Science and Technology Chapter
stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook ; 2010 Edition stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan ; News stat.go.jp
MEXT, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology mext.go.jp/english ;
Nanotechnology Research Institute aist.go.jp/nanotech ; Aerospace Industry in Japan 2009 ;
Trends in Japan: Science and Technology web-japan.org/trends/science ;Japan Technology
Information japantechniche.com ;

Good Websites and Sources: Japanese Electronics and Information Technology Industries
Association (JIETA) jeita.or.jp/english ; Google E-Book: The Japanese Electronics Industry
books.google.com/books ; JETRO Report on Japanese Consumer Electronics jetro.org/content ;
Nikkei Electronic Asia techon.nikkeibp.co.jp ; Gadgets and Consumer Electronics Blogs
blogged.com/directory/shopping/consumer-electronics ; Companies Listed by Industry mizuho-
sc.com ; Japan Shuffle, a blog with info on electronics japanshuffle.blogspot.com ; Trends in
Japan: Science and Technology web-japan.org/trends/science ;

Links in this Website: SCIENCE IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; NOBEL PRIZES IN

JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; JAPANESE SPACE PROGRAM
Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; TECHNOLOGY IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ;
GADGETRY AND INVENTIONS IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; ROBOTS IN
JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; SONY, TOYOTA AND HONDA ROBOTS
Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; UNIVERSITIES IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan
;INDUSTRIES IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; HYBRIDS, FUEL CELLS AND
ELECTRIC CARS IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; HONDA CARS, PLANES,
ROBOTS AND RACING Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; JAPANESE ELECTRONICS
INDUSTRY Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; JAPANESE ELECTRONICS COMPANIES
Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; CANON, SHARP AND TOSHIBA Factsanddetails.com/Japan ;
SONY Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; SONY PRODUCTS Factsanddetails.com/Japan ;
PANASONIC Factsanddetails.com/Japan ; TRAINS IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan ;
SHINKANSEN (JAPANESE BULLET TRAINS) Factsanddetails.com/Japan

Good Websites and Sources on Science: Japan Science and Technology Agency jst.go.jp/EN ;
MEXT, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology mext.go.jp/english ;
Science Links Japan sciencelinks.jp ; Stanford University J-Guide to Science and Technology
jguide.stanford.edu ;Japan Advanced Institute of Science of Technology jaist.ac.jp ; Japan
Institute of Invention and Innovation jiii.or.jp/english ; Statistical Handbook of Japan Science
and Technology Chapter stat.go.jp/english/data/handbook ; 2010 Edition
stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan ; News stat.go.jp ; Trends in Japan: Science and Technology web-
japan.org/trends/science ; Book: Japanese Science From the Inside by Samuel Coleman
(Routledge, 2000).

Science Museums National Museum of Nature and Science kahaku.go.jp/english ; Museum of

Natural History Tohuku University dges.tohoku.ac.jp/museum ; Osaka Museum of Natural
History mus-nh.city.osaka.jp ; National Science Museum (Ueno Park in Tokyo) kahaku.go.jp
National Museum of Nature and Science and Technology Tokyotopia tokyotopia.com ;
Research Centers: Tsukuba Science City Wikipedia Article Wikipedia ; Fujitsu Laboratories
fujitsu.com/group/labs ; Hitachi Research Laboratories hitachi.com/rd/hrl ; Toshiba Research
and Development Center toshiba.co.jp

History of Technology in Japan

Japanese call staplers “hotchkisses," in honor of the man who invented the stapler, Eli Hubble
Hotchkiss, in 1886. Hotchkiss sent the first shipload of them to Japan in 1910.

In the 1950s and 60s many Japan companies pirated their designs almost directly from foreign
products. Canon and Nikon cameras were modeled after German Leicas and the first Hondas
were patterned on the British MG and Austin Healey.
The Japanese have hundreds of popular products based on American inventions. In the 1950s
U.S. companies failed to fully utilize transistors because they wanted to protect their investments
in vacuum tubes. This paved the way for companies like Sony to make transistor radios.

The Japanese have made advances in lasers, diodes, CD players, screen technology, video
recorders, and music synthesizers based in many cases on physics and chemistry discoveries
made at U.S. laboratories like Bell Labs and RCA.

Research in Japan

The private sector accounts for 80 percent of all research and development spending in Japan.
Japanese companies often spend 80 percent of their research and development money on
developing new technology. Japan is almost totally dependent on the United States for basic
technological research.

In 2007, Japan was named the world's most innovative nation by the business arm of the
Economist magazine with innovation being defined as “the application of knowledge on a novel
way, primarily for the economic benefit." Switzerland, the United States and Sweden were
ranked second through forth.

The modern high-tech research city of Tsukuba has been dubbed "brain city." In the "zootron"
climate room of the Tsukuba Institute of Animal Husbandry cows are outfitted with gas masks
that measure the chemical content of the air they exhale.

The National Research Center for Disaster Prevention (NRCDP) has a corrugated-steel Rainfall
Simulator, mounted on railroad tracks, that can produce anything from drizzle to a typhoon. This
devise is rolled on artificial hills to get a sense of when dangerous mudslide begin. The NRCDP
Earthquake Simulator is a giant hydraulically-powered "shaking" machine that is used to test
horizontal and vertical movements on bridges, buildings and other structures. [Source:
Smithsonian].

Things aren't so good in Japan's universities. Many Japanese universities have crowded labs, out-
of-date facilities and a lack of funding. Even Tokyo University has been accused of having
rundown equipment and out of date curriculums. In the many universities it is not uncommon for
students to skip all their classes and get a friend to take the final exam for them.

In an effort to revitalize Japan's scientific research community, the government is allocated more
funds to improve labs, do basic research and create more advanced degree programs. Top
universities are trying to reduce class size, boost special skills and attract more young and
dynamic lecturers and researchers.

Five Nobel laureates have studied at Kyoto University and five have studied at Tokyo
University. Tokyo University's engineering department is currently running a “Nobel Prize”
program in which promising researchers are given ¥10 million a year in research money and
access to expensive equipment such laser generators in hopes that they will come up with some
Nobel-prize winning discoveries.
Industrial Policy and Japanese Innovation

Steve Lohr wrote in the New York Times, “In the 1980s, the Japanese government was widely
viewed as the master practitioner of industrial policy, and Japan Inc. seemed poised to overrun
one American industry after another, including computers. As we know, it didn't turn out that
way, partly because of steps taken by the American government and industry. A semiconductor
trade agreement was intended to pry open the Japanese market, and I.B.M. invested in a crucial
but then-struggling supplier, Intel." [Source: Steve Lohr, New York Times, January 1, 2011]

“More important, however, Japan never became a force in a particularly unruly, imaginative side
of computing: writing software. Generalizations are risky, but it seems that Japan, as a society,
has not produced enough of that kind of innovative skill, despite being a formidable patent
generator. (In that area, Japan is still slightly ahead of the United States by some measures,
though Japan's patent filing pace is slowing.) [Ibid]

“To call Japan's industrial policy an outright failure would be simplistic. In some industries---
autos, machine tools and consumer electronics, for example---it has done quite well. They are
still in the game in those industries and going gangbusters---and we are not," said Clyde V.
Prestowitz Jr., president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former United States trade
negotiator. Still, just how strong a hand government policy had in those successes is open to
debate." [Ibid]

Japanese Patents and Papers

Japan was No.2 in patent applications behind the United States in patent applications in 2009 and
2010. By company Panasonic was No.1 in the world. International patent filings in 2010: 1)
United States (44,855 patents, down 1.7 percent from the previous year); 2) Japan (32,156
patents); 3) China (12,337 patents, up 56 percent percent from the previous year); 4) South
Korea (9,686 patents, up 20.5 percent from the previous year). [Source: World Intellectual
property Organization]

According to the technology information company Thomson Reuters the number of scientific
papers from Japan in 2009 was 78,500, which was 6.75 percent of the world's total. Japan has
traditionally been strong in physics and pharmacology, accounting for a relatively large share of
of the world total. In space science studies, immunology and physics, more than 10 percent of
the most-cited papers came from Japan. The frequency in which Japanese scientific papers were
cited in the last five years (.98) was second in Asia behind Singapore (1.0).

The number of published papers by Japanese scientists has increased only modestly between
2000, when 72,000 papers published, and 2009, when 78,500 papers were published according to
Thompson Reuters. By contrast China had 125,000 papers published in 2009. “A contributing
factor to Japan's underperformance could be the low rate of international collaboration. Research
is driven by domestic activity instead of innovative opportunities with quickly developing
neighbors," wrote Jonathan Adams, director research evaluation at Thomson Reuters.

About 11 percent of the scientific paper published in Japan are in physics

High-Tech Factories in Japan

See Factories, Industry

High-Tech Agriculture in Japan

See Agriculture

HDTV Television and Japan

Japan is a leader in high-tech liquid-crystal display screens used on computers and cell phones.
In 1996, Fujitsu and other Japanese electronic companies introduced the first flat screen
televisions using plasma-technology panels. Early models sold for $10,000.

After being heralded as the next big and sucking up $8.3 billion in research and start up costs,
analog high definition television (HDTV) was obsolete before it even fully reached the market. It
lost out to digital HDTV, which, with the help of an inexpensive "smart box," could combine the
function of a television and a computer. Analog uses radio waves to transmit information while
digital uses a computer style code that is cheaper to broadcast.

Blue LEDs and Inventor Rights in Japan

In 1990, Shuji Nakamura, an engineer at Nichia Corporation, invented the blue light emitting
diode (LED), an important invention used in wide range of display panels in electronics devises
that includes everything from cell phone displays to large outdoor screens. Nakamura succeeded
in commercializing the LED it in 1993. Even though the technology earned Nichia hundreds of
million of dollars in profits Nichia only gave Nakamura ¥20,000 for the invention.

The blue LED combined with existing red and yellow LEDs made it possible to produce all the
colors in display panels with LEDS. LEDS are semiconductors that emit light when electricity is
run through them. As of 2004, Nicha had earned ¥121 billion in royalties from the patent for the
blue LED.

Nakamura was angry that he didn't receive more compensation and sued Nichia. In January
2004, Nichia was ordered to pay ¥20 billion to Nakamura. The court decided that Nakamura
contributed 50 percent to the patent earnings and deserved ro appropriately rewarded. In January
2005, Nakamura accepted ¥840 billion, $8 million, as a settlement with Nichia.

In a decision like the one involving blue LEDs, Hitachi was ordered to pay a former researcher
¥163 million for patent rights related to optical discs. A Canon researcher was awarded ¥33.52
million in compensation for patented laser printer technology he invented. He has wanted ¥1
billion.

Magnetically Levitated Trains in Japan

Japan and Germany are currently experimenting with MAGLEV trains (magnetically levitated
trains that float above the track on a cushion generated by superconducting magnet). A Maglev
train has been built in Shanghai.

The Japanese program began in 1962, with testing starting in 1997 on the 18.4-kilometer test line
between Tsuru and Otsuki, 30 miles north of Miyazaki, in Yamanashi Prefecture on Kyushu. In
1999, the Japanese maglev train has reached speeds of 552 kph (325mph). French high speed
trains have reached 515kph.

In April 2003, 480 people were taken on 500kph ride on a maglev test line Yamanishi Prefecture.
Describing the ride Hiroyuki Nakamura wrote in the Yomiuri Shimbun, “The train began its run
on wheels just like an ordinary electric train. But when it reached a speed of about 169 kph, it
shifted into maglev mode...I felt the train rise into the air for a moment. the noise of the wheels
stopped, and I heard a sound similar ro that of an airplane housing its wheels after take off...The
speedometer installed in the passenger cabin clocked off every 10kph as the speed increased. In
about a minute it topped 500kph.

How Maglev Trains Work

Japanese maglev linear engines are powered by the interaction between superconducting
magnets (made with a niobium-titanium alloy and cooled to near absolute zero with expensive
liquid helium refrigeration systems) on the trains and track. Each train magnet is simultaneously
pushed and pulled by a magnet of the same polarity on the side of the track. The polarity of the
side magnets is constantly reversing and the speed in which they reverse determines the speed of
the train.

The train floats as result of repulsion of magnets of the same polarity on the train and the bottom
of the track, which lifts the train above the track. There is virtually no friction, which allows the
train to travel so fast. The ride in a maglev train feels like the ride in an airplane.

Problems with maglev trains include: 1) the incredible weight of the magnets and refrigeration
systems, causing trains cars to weigh up as much as 100 tons; 2) magnetic repulsion is inherently
unstable because of the way the magnets repel one another so the guideway has to be perfectly
smooth so the maglev train can float at a constant six inches above the track; 3) heavy shields are
needed to protect passengers from the powerful magnets which can stop watches and
pacemakers; and 4) trains tend to move back and forth and up and down, an effect which can be
dampened with shock absorbers.

Building a maglev line is very expensive. The main expense is the elevated concrete guideway
with embedded aluminum loops and magnets. The cost of liquid helium used as a coolant to
create superconductivity us also very high. If superconductors are improved to achieve
temperatures high enough for liquid nitrogen then the costs will be cut by a factor of 100. For the
train to reach ultra-high speeds the track must be straight, and curves must be banked like those
on a bobsled course. Limiting factors that prevent the train from reaching higher speeds are air
resistance and tunnels.
Japan and Germany have yet to find commercial applications for maglev technology. In February
2000, Germany announced that it was dropping its plan to build a maglev train because of
worries about cost and doubts about whether passengers will pay higher fares for the train.

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