September 14-15, 2001,
Keynote Speech IT and Digital Divide in Asia Workshop at National University of Singapore
Shigeru Nakayama

In the year 2000, the Mori-led government in Japan adopted a `Basic Strategy for IT' policy which involved the formation of an advisory committee. One can immediately see from even a cursory examination of the committee's recommendations that nothing particularly innovative has been proposed. Rather the recommendations are highly imitative of American and European policy several years ago. As for infrastructure-building, the most praiseworthy aspect are the proposed subsidies for IT-based training courses. For the Japanese who tend to have little experience of having used a keyboard, these courses will be highly useful.

The above title is the official title I was assigned for this conference, but I must at the outset say that the actual practice and development of information technology was much less influenced by public sector policy and more the result of the desires of the people themselves. The culture of the people, as end-users, was a more decisive factor in determining the trajectory of development. In what follows, we will discuss particular aspects of Japanese IT in the context of the minimizing the domestic digital divide.

1. Digital divide and keyboard allergy

In my keynote address, I wish to discuss some aspects of Japanese IT in relation to overcoming the digital divide between the Roman-alphabet-based West and ideogram-based East Asia. This has been a very serious, almost insurmountable, disadvantage and handicap for East Asians in catching up computer-Internet system.

The alphabet-based keyboard was a bottleneck for Japanese seeking to access the Internet. Indeed, it was a problem for all East Asians who use ideograms, as they get used to alphabet much later than their counterparts in European countries. According to a UNESCO survey of computer literacy in the late 1990s, the Japanese people are far behind Europeans or Americans, simply because the average Japanese person is ignorant of the alphabet-based keyboard up until high school time.

Although the Japanese government has recently started teaching English (or, at least the alphabet) at primary schools, the digital divide between alphabet-friendly Western countries and ideogram-using East Asian countries still cannot be reduced to zero. The average Japanese has, until recently, little to do with the alphabet-based typewriter, due to the lack of opportunities to use English in his or her daily life. Unless students possess their own typewriters or personal computers, official school training in English or on a PC does not mean much in terms of the overall promotion of computer usage in Japan.

Rather, the Japanese have been strong in developing the non-keyboard area of the IT revolution: namely audiovisual media, cartoons, videocassette recorders, fax machines, console games etc. They have been weak in the development of software that relied on the use of a keyboard.

2. The Double Revolution of the Word Processor

Up until the 1970s, I doubted that a word-processor capable of generating Chinese characters would be possible. The introduction of a two-byte system by East Asians made it possible for Chinese characters to be written on a word-processor and for other developments to be contemplated. The Japanese word-processor was invented in 1979 and in general use from around 1984, thanks to the installation of a phonetics-ideogram conversion system.

While those in the West experienced a more step-by-step transformation from handwritten to mechanical means (via the typewriter) and then a second move to electronic means, East Asians experienced a double revolution, jumping from handwritten to electronic communications without taking the intermediate step of typewriting, once the transformation of ideograms on word-processors became possible,

Such a double revolution is really significant in East Asian history but people have had to overcome an extraordinarily high barrier. For ordinary people, there had been no need to use typewriters or PCs in their daily life. Only small numbers of specially-trained typists (usually women) used the cumbersome Japanese typewriters for producing official documents. Unlike her Western counterpart, the average Japanese woman used neither a typewriter nor a word-processor in the office. Few could overcome the double revolution involved in learning to use a PC.

3.Late Beginning of the Internet

The NTT establishment was slow to realise the importance of Internet communication. For them, it was only a vehicle for private communication amongst academic researchers. Jun Murai and his academic associates experimentally connected with the world-wide Internet in 1984 and its usage soon spread throughout the Japanese scientific community.

In 1985, Nifty Serve and other companies started provider services for the personal computer network. Japanese computer hobbyists communicated amongst themselves in the Japanese language without being connected to the international Internet, while scientists opted to use it and communicate in English. It was only in early 1992 that Japanese PC networks became connected to the Internet.

The commercial use of the Internet began around 1995. The catch-cry for PC manufacturers was "Let us play with and enjoy the Internet!" Scientists and professionals who used the Internet as part of their day-to-day work frowned on such slogans. I personally tried to promote the use of the Internet among ordinary Japanese citizens in order to share with them what is a wonderful vehicle for free and open communication. But ordinary Japanese do not to find much use for it, with many using the Internet purely for recreation. The so-called PC boom referred to in the business literature is arguably more wishful thinking than reflective of reality. Many people who were able to afford a PC acquired one but ultimately found little use for it. Business people were late to join the bandwagon and when they did, they mostly used the Intranet, working within a corporate firewall.

4. Success of mobile phones

NTT actually started a car mobile phone service in 1979 for elite customers, but mobile phones (cellular phones) were less popular in Japan compared with Hong Kong or Taiwan due to the non-competitive aspects of NTT's monopoly over the Japanese market. Following on from the development of cellular phones came portable, hand-held phones (hereafter abbreviated as "keitai" in Japanese) which appealed to a much wider market in 1992.

Prior to this, NTT had started a pager service as early as 1968 which enabled company headquarters to maintain contact with travelling salesmen and worried parents to stay in touch with their children. The numerical pager then appeared with only a small display which could be used to convey the telephone numbers of senders or any numbers that needed to be transmitted. A `pager culture' subsequently emerged in the early 1990s with school kids using telephones to send messages in the form of numbers, just for fun. For example, 39 is pronounced in Japanese as "san kyuu" which approximates the English words of "thank you." It then became fashionable for young Japanese to have numerical pagers (pocket bell or what they call "pokeberu"). These were not welcomed by the world of education for these devices facilitated cheating in exams and were disruptive in classrooms. Nevertheless, the devices were developed further and two numbers were able to be used in such as way as to denote fifty Japanese syllables.

In 1994, hardware manufacturing and marketing was privatized. What's more significant was that in 1995, the PHS (Personal Handyphone System) was launched. This competed with the keitai. In the years which followed, there has been harsh competition between the keitai and the PHS (Tadashi Aoyagi, Dai-3 Sedai Keitai Denwa Bijinesu, 2000, p. 39). Mobile phones were sold very cheaply or even given away. Young Japanese have embraced the PHS phones as fashion accessories. We thus see a trend away from Pokeberu in 1995 to PHS phones, and then to the keitai. Although the hardware was almost free, the cost of wireless telephone calls has been much more than for ordinary calls. At one time, kids paid so much for PHS and keitai calls that parents complained in such large numbers that young Japanese turned to using them for the transmission of messages in the tradition of pokeberu culture.

The "DDI Pocket" phone service began in December 1996 as primarily a closed mail service between PHS terminals. NTT DoCoMo met this challenge by providing a "short message" service between keitai cellular phones from June 1997. Furthermore, with the PHS, NTT Personal started an open e-mail service in March 1998 and then the company NTT DoCoMo followed in February 1999 with a keitai I-mode service. (Takeshi Natsuno, I-mode Strategy, Nikkei BP, 2000, p. 33.) This mobile Internet service has now become the center of Japanese youth culture.

Ideographic characters are, thanks to two-byte culture, displayed much more concisely than alphabetical representations of European languages. Now 80 or 90 per cent of mobile phone use by young Japanese is confined to e-mail exchange, while adults use mobile phone just like before mainly for telephone communication. The problem of cost aside, shy youths often prefer communicating with visual images rather than actual speech.

A few years ago, I organized a freshman seminar to discuss mobile phones; while students all carried a PHS or a keitai, I, the teacher, was the only person who didn't. My lectures were often interrupted by the ringing of a keitai. On the other hand, they were useful for professors wishing to contact students.

What is significant is the way young Japanese e-mail each other. Teenagers have still not gotten used to the alphabet-based keyboard. Instead, they have been quick to adjust themselves to new systems of communication using mobile phone ten-key, keypads. The Japanese language involves use of a system of phonetics, kana, which has five vowels and nine major consonants. These phonetics are perhaps better suited to the decimal keypad of mobile phones, as consonants are allocated to the decimal ten-key keypad, while vowels are represented by pushing numbers one to five times. This is perhaps more natural than the alphabet-turned-to-decimal keypad seen in the Western telephone dialing system. In this way, the decimal mobile phone has become an indispensable tool or toy for fashion-conscious Japanese youth. They are sometimes called the "thumb-tribe" due to their ability to type on a keypad with one thumb at a rate much faster than adults using PC keyboards and typing with ten fingers.

In 1999, NTT DoCoMo commenced the I-mode service, which connects with the Internet. This service includes not only an e-mail function but also enables the transmission of various data. Its use for telephone calls has become a less important aspect of the service, so much so that it can be rightly called a mobile Internet rather than a mobile phone. This has contributed towards the strengthening of a youth subculture. NTT DoCoMo designed I-mode to fit into the already developed digital youth subculture, while the dominant Western culture of the PC-Internet system has spread much more slowly. Although there are few adults who subscribe to the I-mode, the subculture of mobile phone use will arguably come to constitute the major culture of the Japanese after a decade or two when these teenagers make up much of the workforce. Looking at the content of I-mode now, it is full of playful information that teenagers would like to have, such as horoscopes and various entertainments and events, while I, an adult, need only weather forecast.

5. PC vs. Mobile Internet

In 2000, when Bill Gates came to Japan, he was asked about his assessment of the future of mobile phones by a Tokyo University student. He responded that the screen was too small and the future of the Internet rested with the PC. Despite his warning, mobile phone sales continued to boom in Japan ("Keitai culture" by Ernest S. Johnson and Sean Odani, Via, pp.24-25, 2001).

Considering the popularity of I-mode mobile phones not only in Japan but also in Hong Kong, there appears to be a cultural divide between East and West in terms of how the Internet is accessed. Americans think big. Japanese on the other hand are capable of dealing with smaller things While Bill Gates and the alphabet-based peoples of the West (the US in particular and including myself) prefer to use PCs to access the Internet, average East Asians will approach it via the mobile phone. Since mobile phones are getting cheaper everywhere, they will eventually bring about the dissolution of the digital divide, especially in non-alphabet-based countries.

Still, there seems to be certain disadvantages associated with the mobile Internet, in terms of the input of letters and the display of output. For input, many of my students claim that the one-thumb operation is more convenient, easier and faster than typing on a PC. Students say that they do not require a particularly large display. Those Japanese who are already familiar with the keyboard, like myself, can never cope with one-thumb operation.

Teenagers and the average adult use the email service to exchange short messages such as where to meet and at what time. In time, they will use it to find a place to eat or shop.
Today, the keitai can handle most functions of a PC, despite having only a small display. Most people never write a long article or a book. For those seeking to produce a long document, a PC is a must-have.

In Japan where there is no tradition of a keyboard-typing culture, the Internet is penetrating the life of common people through mobile terminals rather than the PC. While Japanese academics and professionals prefer to stay with the PC, ordinary people prefer mobile phones. What's more important for girls is the design of mobile phones, for the phones are a fashion accessory not unlike a necklace or a watch. The young mobile Internet generation see the Keitai as constituting part of their body and mind, a life-line to be worn at all times and throughout life.

6. Conclusion

We can sum up this paper by looking at the following table which represents a digital "trivide" rather than digital divide.

JAPANESE DIGITAL TRIVIDE

The contrast between PCs and mobile phones can be, rather jokingly, extended in the following way:

Whether the PC keyboard or mobile keypad will dominate the market in future is hard to judge. In the alphabet-based West, keyboard culture remains standard, while ten-key keypads are confined to phone dialing. For the Japanese, both will co-exist for the time being. There will be some devices which will serve to bridge the keyboard and keypad, but for most Japanese and East Asians, the mobile ten-key keypad will eventually dominate communications, unless their own languages give way to English.

The history of technology tells us that while new technology is often resisted by the older generation, it will survive the next generation only if it keeps the attention of the younger generation. On a Japanese commuter train, people read something, a newspaper, a book or a magazine, but you will find teenagers gazing at mobile phones for writing email or to collect information. Neither the Japanese government nor corporations anticipated the emergence of such a subculture, but they are now adjusting themselves to the newly-created digital environment. NEC and Matsushita are cooperating on R&D for the next generation keitai, and even the Japanese government has committed to providing funding support, in the hope of setting the world standard and helping Japan to become the world leader.

For contemporary Japanese, the double revolution from hand to electronic keyboard is still hardly overcome, but with the advent of the mobile Internet, the next generation of Japanese can jump from handwriting to the keypad. The second revolution from keypad to keyboard is still to be seen. Whether the second revolution will happen or not is not certain, but it is clear that a mobile phone with ten keys will dominate multi-media culture because of its convenience, low cost and digital divide-free nature.

Further words on the digital divide

Even in a high-tech society like Japan, there exists a digital divide between social strata. Handicapped people may not be able to afford a new personal computer, which costs around 200,000 yen. Major computer manufacturers have kept discouraging the used-computer market in order to prevent pricecutting. This is despite the fact that most users do not need particularly advanced computers. For most people, the word processing function is what is most needed. A friend of mine, Dr. Akiba, the mayor of Hiroshima city, encouraged a small business to manufacture a no-frills computer for handicapped people with the price of 50,000 yen. The influential big manufacturers were not in a position to influence the pricing of this computer for "handicapped people" lest they be criticised for being socially insensitive.

APPEDICIES

Appendix 1: Generation Chart

Appendix 2: Chronological Table