Japanese Hang on to Fax Machines

choi

Martin Fackler, In High-Tech Japan, the Fax Machines Roll On; An aging nation sticks with the tried and true. New York Times, Feb 14, 2013 (front page).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/1 ... ng-but-a-relic.html

Quote:

"Japan is renowned for its robots and bullet trains, and has some of the world’s fastest broadband networks. But it also remains firmly wedded to a pre-Internet technology — the fax machine — that in most other developed nations has joined answering machines, eight-tracks and cassette tapes in the dustbin of outmoded technologies.

"The Japanese government’s Cabinet Office said that almost 100 percent of business offices and 45 percent of private homes had a fax machine as of 2011.

"Japan’s reluctance to give up its fax machines offers a revealing glimpse into an aging nation that can often seem quietly determined to stick to its tried-and-true ways, even if the rest of the world seems to be passing it rapidly by. The fax addiction helps explain why Japan, which once revolutionized consumer electronics with its hand-held calculators, Walkmans and, yes, fax machines, has become a latecomer in the digital age, and has allowed itself to fall behind nimbler competitors like South Korea and China.

"Handwritten messages have long been a necessity in Japan, where the written language is so complex, with two sets of symbols [hiragana 平仮名 and katakana 片仮名] and 2,000 characters borrowed from Chinese, that keyboards remained impractical until the advent of word processors in the 1980s. Faxes continue to appeal to older Japanese, who often feel uncomfortable with keyboards, experts say. At the same time, clinging to old ways also forces Japan to accept higher levels of inefficiency.

My comment:
(a) Yuichiro SUGAHARA  菅原 勇一郎, owner of Tamagoya  玉子屋

お弁当の玉子屋
http://www.tamagoya.co.jp/
(i) suge; suga (ok) 菅 【すげ; すが(ok)】 (n): "sedge"
(ii) tamago 卵(P); 玉子 【たまご】 (n): "egg"  (where "P" stands for principal(ly))

(b) Mr Sugahara is quoted as saying, "Seeing the handwriting [on fax paper] is a reminder that the bento’s 1,000-year history was built on personal ties to the customers.”
(i) bento
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bento
(section 1 Etymology; section 2 History)
(ii) The above English Wiki page is identical in contents to that in Japanese Wiki.

弁当
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%81%E5%BD%93
(section 1 語源; section 3 歴史)

(c) The report mentions "Nihonbashi, Tokyo’s answer to Wall Street."

Nihonbashi  日本橋
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonbashi
("a business district of Chūō 中央(区), Tokyo, Japan which grew up around the bridge of the same name which has linked two sides of the Nihonbashi River 日本橋川 at this site since the 17th century. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603, and the current bridge made of stone dates from 1911")

* hashi 橋 【はし】 (n): "bridge"
(d) The report says, "Japan’s love affair with the fax began during the nation’s economic heyday in the 1980s, when the machines became a household appliance more common than automatic dishwashers. Japan quickly dominated global fax production, making 90 percent of the tens of millions of machines built, according to the Communications and Information Network Association of Japan, an industry group that includes fax makers."

Actually US invented fax machines. See fax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax
(A landmark year was 1964, in which the Xerox Corporation introduced (and patented) what many consider to be the first commercialized version of the modern fax machine, under the name (LDX) or Long Distance Xerography)