CNN
–

When you think of Tokyo, you might think of films like “Akira” or “Ghost of the Seashell,” depicting neon-lit skyscrapers and its world-famous bullet train system, or futuristic Japan filled with intelligent robots and holograms.

But there is a more common side to Japan that can’t be found anywhere in these cyberpunk films. This includes fax machines, floppy disks and personalized ink stamps. It includes artefacts that have long disappeared in other developed countries, but in Japan it has stubbornly persistent.

For everyday residents, the delay in digital technology and subsequent bureaucracy is at best inconvenient and, at worst, they want to tear their hair apart.

“Japanese banks are portals to hell,” one Facebook user wrote to a group of foreigners in their local group. The commenter quips ironically: “Maybe sending a fax will help.”

The scale of the issue has become horrifyingly clear as the Japanese government struggled to deal with the national crisis with its clumsy digital tools.

Since then, they have launched dedicated efforts to fill that gap, including newly created digital agencies and many new initiatives. But they have arrived at the technology race 36 years after the arrival of World Wide Web, and decades behind, more than half a century after the first email was sent.

Now, as the countryside competes to change itself, questions remain. What took so long and can they still catch up?

It wasn’t always the case. Japan was the purpose of global acclaim in the 1970s and 1980s, with companies such as Sony, Toyota, Panasonic and Nintendo becoming popular names. Japan has brought world beloved devices like Walkman and games like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros.

But it changed by the turn of the century with the rise of computers and the Internet.

The world was transforming into a software-driven economy, but “Japan was slow to adapt to software and services with its hardware strengths,” said Colonel Kawashi, director of the University of Tokyo’s Economic Security and Policy Innovation Program.

A variety of factors have made the problem worse, he said. Japan has not invested sufficiently in information and communication technology, and as its electronics industry shrinks, Japanese engineers flocked to foreign companies.

This left the government with low digital literacy and a shortage of skilled high-tech workers. Over time, various ministries and agencies adopted their own patchwork IT strategies, but no unified government promotion. Stamp Used to validate identity.

There were also cultural factors.

“Japanese companies are known for their risk aversion culture, seniority-based … hierarchical systems and slow, consensus-driven decision-making processes, all of which hinder innovation,” Kawai said.

And thanks to Japan’s plunge birth rate, it’s far older than young people. This distinctive proportion of elderly people means broader distrust of new technologies, vigilance of digital fraud, and preferences for traditional methods such as: Stamp, “There is relatively little demand or pressure on digital services,” Kawai said.

That indifference was widespread, said Jonathan Coopersmith, professor emeritus of history at Texas A&M University. Small and medium-sized businesses and individuals were not forced to switch from fax machines to computers. Why buy a new expensive machine and learn how to use it when the fax works fine and everyone in Japan uses it?

We found that large businesses and institutions, such as banks and hospitals, have switchovers that can be too disruptive for everyday services. “The bigger you get, the harder it becomes, especially to change the software,” Coopersmith said.

It also caused a legal headache. New technologies require new laws, such as how electric scooters have encouraged new road regulations, or how countries around the world are trying to legislate deepfakes and AI copyrights after the AI boom. Japan’s digitalization had to change thousands of regulations, Coopersmith estimates, lawmakers simply had no incentive to do so. After all, that doesn’t mean that digitalization isn’t an important issue driving votes in elections.

He summed it up: “Why do I want to be part of the digital world when I don’t need you?”

Pandemic push

As a result, for decades, Japan remained old technology, if any other advancement, creating the ultimate contradiction.

Japan has world-class robotics and aerospace industry, with features of everyday life that tend to be respectful, with safe and clean public spaces, ubiquitous vending machines, convenience stores, widely accessible public transport, and comprehensive bullet train systems.

The digital obstacles look even more severe in comparison.

In 2018, the then-Cybersecurity Minister of Japan raised anger and distrust when he claimed that he had never used a computer because his secretary had done “that thing” before going back to his remarks a few days later.

And until 2019, the last company in Japan still operating Pocket ended up halting services. It’s decades after personal messaging devices have become obsolete by mobile phones.

The prevalence of old technology also produced endless bureaucracy. You may need to open a bank account or register a home. Stamp The stickers should be requested directly by visiting the local council, along with documents of personal information, Kawai said.

Ultimately, there was a global pandemic to ultimately force change. Japan’s technological gap has become clear as the national and local governments would be overwhelmed without the digital tools to streamline the processes.

In May 2020, months after the virus began ramping globally, the Japanese Ministry of Health launched an online portal for hospitals rather than relying on handwritten faxes, phone calls and emails.

And even so, the hiccups persisted. The contact tracing app had a month-long system error that failed to notify people of possible exposure, public broadcaster NHK reported. Adapting to remote work and school was challenging, as many people never used file sharing services or video tools like Zoom.

In one heart-warming case of 2022, the Japanese town mistakenly routed the entire Covid Relief Fund of about 46.3 million yen ($322,000) to a single man’s bank account. According to NHK, this stems from the fact that the bank is given both a floppy disk of information and a paper request form, but by the time the authorities realized their mistakes, the man had already staked most of the money.

For people under the age of 35, a floppy disk is a magnetic memory strip wrapped in plastic physically inserted into a computer. Usually, each store up to 1.44MB of data. This is less than the average resolution photo on your iPhone.

The situation has become so bad that at one point, Takuya Hirai, appointed to the newly created role of Minister of Digital Transformation in 2021, described handling of the pandemic as a “digital defeat.”

Thus, digital agencies were born. This is a division tasked with speeding up Japan, born of a “combination of fear and opportunity,” Coopersmith said.

Created in 2021, it launched a series of initiatives, including deploying a smart version of Japan’s Social Security Cards and seeking more cloud-based infrastructure.

Last July, the digital agency ultimately declared victory in “war on floppy disks,” eliminating disks from all government systems.

However, the pain was also increasing. At one point, the government sought the public for ideas about metaverse through a complex system that required them to download Excel spreadsheets, fill out details, and send emails to the ministry.

After the move gained light corn and distrust on social media, Digital Minister Tarocono wrote on Twitter:

Kawai said the government has made solid progress and companies have rushed to follow, hiring many external contractors and consultants to help overhaul the system.

Masahiro goto is one such consultant. As part of the Nomura Research Institute (NRI) Digital Transformation Team, he has helped large Japanese companies across all industries adapt to the digital world. From designing new business models to adopting new internal systems.

These clients often “want to move forward, but I’m not sure how I’ll go about it,” he told CNN. “Many people still use older systems that require a system that is approaching a lot of maintenance, or end-of-service life. Often, it’s time for them to reach out to us for help.”

NRI consultants are in high demand. The number of companies reaching out to services, especially over the past five years, “are definitely increasing year by year,” Goto said. And justification: For many years, Japanese companies have outsourced their IT needs. This means there is a lack of internal skills to completely digitize.

“Essentially, they want their business to be more efficient and I want them to actively adopt digital technology as a means of survival,” he said. “In the end, improving productivity is essential as Japan’s population continues to decline.”

According to local media, certain pockets are reluctant.

Something like Stamp A person who is rooted in tradition and customs and who gives to children when some parents are older may be difficult to phase out given their cultural importance.

The pace of progress is an ambitious digital agency to drive regulatory reforms, and it also depends on lawmakers’ prioritizing digitalization when creating future budgets, Kawai said. It is also the fact that Japan is catching up to the moving goal post as new technologies advance in other parts of the world.

“This will be a continuing challenge as digital technology in 2025 is different from digital technology in 2030 and 2035,” Coopersmith said.

However, experts are optimistic. At this rate, Kawai estimates that Japan can catch up with Westerners in five to ten years.

And finally, there is a public hunger as more and more companies accept cashless payments and deploy new online services.

“People generally want to be digitalized for sure,” Kawai said. “I’m sure young people, or the public, prefer to get digital as soon as possible.”

When the election authorities in Bosnia stripped Milorado Dodik as president of his post’s small Serbian majority stateret republika srpska, he did his best to be outrageous. Instead, the divisive and denial nationalists defining his own challenge to the institutions that were trying to defeat him.

“What if you refuse?” he asked.

Bosnia may be trying to find it.

Dodik, a major Balkan ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been in and around Bosnia since 2006, choosing the country’s patchwork multi-ethnic state stitches. The state was born in 1995 by the Dayton Peace Agreement. This halted the violence that spread across former Yugoslavia when it collapsed in the 1990s.

Dayton stopped the Bosnian war, which split the country along ethnic boundaries. Bosnia consists of two entities. It is the federation where Bosnia (Bosnian Muslims) shares power with the Croatians, and the republika srpska, ruled by Serbia. Above it sits the “high representatives” of the central government with almost no teeth and foreign countries. He is given extensive authority to carry out trades and maintain peace.

Dodik, who has been split from Bosnia for years and threatened to “reunite” with Serbia, was convicted in February of violating the orders of current high representative Christian Schmidt. Last week, the Court of Appeals supported his one-year prison sentence and six-year ban on office. Dodik avoided prison by paying a fine, but Bosnian election commission chose on Wednesday to apply a law that automatically removes staff if sentenced to prison for more than six months.

After 20 years of rage against Bosnia’s state-level institutions and encouraged by the cast of his illegal allies and the lack of pushbacks from the European Union, many in Bosnia were surprised that the authorities moved so quickly to implement the court’s decision.

“Since 2006, Dodik has tried his best to weaken Bosnian facilities and run the nation from within,” Arminka Helic, who fled the war in the 1990s and now sits in the British House of Representatives, told CNN. “I didn’t think he expected that after his threat and all the noise, anyone would question his position.”

The question now is whether Dodik will go quietly or fight, she said.

For now, the latter appears to be more likely. Dodik threatened to prevent new elections from being forced to take place when necessary, and looked to allies in Belgrade, Moscow and Budapest for assistance.

“Sudding is not an option,” Dodik said.

Moscow has long been aiming to promote trouble in the Balkans, but has warned that the region could swirl “out of control.” The Bosnian embassy warned that the country was making “historic mistakes.”

“Has its reputation as a ‘European powder keg’ been forgotten? ” asked.

When Dodik first came to power, Western diplomats were pleased. After Bloodbath in the 1990s, he seemed to tell the age of stability. For Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State, Dodique was a “breath of fresh air.”

However, since then, Dodik has revived himself as an unrepentant nationalist, denying 8,000 Bosniak genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, denying the war’s most notorious massacre and often meeting Putin in Moscow.

For many years, Dodik has opposed the structure of the Dayton agreement, threatening that Bosnian institutions will operate in his organization and ultimately divide Srpska from other regions.

He created the nemesis of Christian Schmidt, a current high-ranking German official and former government pastor, under then Chancellor Angela Merkel. Dodik cast Schmidt as Albatros around Srpska’s neck, claiming that his power is trampling on the will of Serb voters.

Since Dodik’s belief, his European allies have begun to take his cause. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has dismissed the lawsuit against Dodik as an attempt by senior officials born by foreigners “to eliminate him for opposing the globalist elite agenda.”

Serbian foreign minister Marco Julich also told Dodik that he was using “political witch hunts” to block “people’s will” using “undemocratic methods.”

Focusing his complaints about Schmidt is a “sensible strategy,” Adnan Sin, a senior analyst at the European Council of Foreign Relations, told CNN.

Even Bosnian institutional advocates find it difficult to justify the power granted to Schmidt. Highly paid representatives are appointed by a council of several Western countries and are awarded the authority to impose invalidation laws, appoint and appoint them. Paddy Ashdown, a former British Parliament who previously served as a high representative, said the role gave him the “power to create a liberal blush.”

“Now, the rest of Europe doesn’t have that power, at least in the democratic part. It’s simply to wake up, visit his website, and dismiss new laws, decisions, people,” Gray said.

In pursuit of more heavyweight diplomatic support, Dodik began to intensify his overture to the Trump administration. He claims he is exposed to “law” by unelected bureaucrats, like the US president.

Dodik has argued that European authorities are ignoring the will of people when he tries to take him out of office, reflecting criticism made by Vice President JD Vance in his infamous Munich speech earlier this year.

He also tried to portray himself as a Christian leader who had been victimized in the majority of Muslim countries, Helic said.

“He is not only experiencing the same trials and tribulations that President Trump has experienced, but he wants to not only stand there as the only person defending the rule of law and Christianity from confusion, but also as the soul of a relative sitting in a small presence on the Balkans,” she said.

The election authorities’ decision against Dodik will take effect once the appeal period expires. An early election will then be called within 90 days.

However, there remains confusion as to who will execute the decision if Dodik refuses to stop or blocks a new election. The EU expanded its peacekeeping forces within the country in March, but these troops did not move to detain Dodik, even if warrants were active for arrests earlier this year.

Jasmine Mujanovic, a senior fellow at the New Line Institute, told CNN that Bosnia and European authorities will face “major tests” if Dodik attempts to stay in the post.

“There’s really no business talking about competing with (Chinese leaders) Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or anyone else, at least from the EU perspective,” he said.

Dodik threatened to ignore the verdict, but Mujanovic said much of his support base had withered. For months, Republika Srpska had “elite exile” as political opposition began to imagine a “post-dodik future.”

Nebosha Vukanovic, founder of the Entity’s opposition, said that only a complete removal from Dodik’s office could end the “constant crisis” in Bosnian politics, and ultimately “free the institutions prosecuting those responsible for crime and corruption.” Dodik is under US sanctions to cultivate a “corrupted sponsorship network.”

However, while some at Srpska may be beginning to imagine a political life without Dodik, Helic has warned that he can take reckless actions, such as attempting to completely separate himself from Bosnia.

“A hopeless man might decide to do something that will make the country even more unstable,” she said.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of AS Equals, CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality. Please see our FAQ for information on how to raise funds for the series.

When Nakamura Kiyoshi’s adult son discovered a bump on his back, she thought it was just a rash.

Still, she urged him to go to the hospital.

Her second son, Hiroshi, was born in 1948, three years after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. As a bombing survivor, Nakamura has long feared that she might convey health issues to her children.

In 2003, at the age of 55, Hiroshi went to the hospital. Two days passed without a word from him. Next is 3. It’s been a week since then.

Finally Nakamura went to the hospital, where his son told her: “They’ll do more tests,” she told CNN.

The results showed that he exhibited stage 4 leukemia, a progressive stage of blood cancer that spread to other parts of his body. According to Nakamura, the doctor told her he gave her son cancer — suggesting radiation that caused breastfeeding when he was a baby.

When Hiroshi died six months later, his mother was left to believe that she essentially killed him. The thoughts have been bothering her for over 20 years.

“I was overwhelmed by guilt and suffering. I still believe that what the doctor said, I caused it. That guilt still lives within me,” said Nakamura, now 101.

People exposed to nuclear radiation are generally encouraged to stop breastfeeding immediately after an atomic bomb. However, experts say there is no concrete evidence that the first-generation “Hibakusha” (WWII atomic bomb survivors) can hand over the cancer-causing materials to children a few years after the exposure.

As the 80th anniversary of the US bombings that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are approaching, aging survivors (some like Nakamura, more than 100 years ago, share stories of suffering and resilience, but they can still be done.

Many of them were young women, either pregnant or birth age, who had lived much of their lives under the heavy shadow of fear and stigma, when bombs fell.

They were told by practitioners, neighbors, friends, and even friends and family that exposure to nuclear radiation could lead to children with illness or disabilities.

Even if infertility or child disorders had nothing to do with radiation exposure, Hibakusha women were often criticized and shunned.

Those with visible wounds from the explosion faced barriers to marriage. The physical wounds were difficult to hide – and more clear evidence of exposure.

And in a society where women’s values were closely linked to marriage and motherhood, this stigma was particularly damaging.

It caused many female survivors (PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)) to “conceal the fact that they are Hibakusha,” according to Nakajimajima, a professor of radiation research at Nagasaki University.

“In a society like Japan where gender discrimination and male domination are deeply rooted, women were particularly affected by radiation,” Nakajima told CNN.

Radiation exposure affected some second-generation survivors, depending on the timing of their pregnancy.

The embryonic stage generally ranges from 5th to 15th week, and is particularly sensitive to brain and organ development. Women exposed to radiation during this window are at high risk of giving birth to children with intellectual disability, neurological problems, and microcephaly, and are marked by small brain and brain dysfunction.

Other studies have shown that Hibakusha faces long-term health risks.

A 2012 RERF study found that radiation exposure from an atomic bomb increases the risk of cancer in the rest of the lives of the people. The rate of solid cancers in women at age 70 increased by 58% for each gray color of radiation absorbed by the body at age 30. Gray is a unit that measures how much radiation energy a body or object takes. For men, solid cancer rates increased by 35%.

Nakamura was 21 years old and was doing laundry outside around 11am when the bomb fell into Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. She was five kilometers (3.1 miles) from the epicenter.

The young mother saw the bright light, followed by a huge boom and a powerful gust of wind that threw her into the air. When she regained consciousness, her home was destroyed – furniture was scattered everywhere, with shards of glass covering the floor. She called out to her mother. She was helping Nagamura take care of her eldest son.

Reassured that they had not been physically injured, the family fled to an air raid shelter. Nakamura didn’t know the scale of the destruction until the next day. All relatives who live near Nagasaki University, near the blast, have died.

Nakamura says he was not affected by radiation exposure. She removed the uterus four years later, and at age 70, doctors discovered a tumor in their abdomen, but her doctors told her that neither of the issues were related to the bombing.

However, psychological trauma has been with her ever since.

Shameful of her own exposure, she feared that she would give Stigma to her grandson as well.

“If people knew that my son had died of leukemia, others might not want to marry them, especially before (my grandchild) got married. My children made sure they understood that.

However, encouraged by other survivors, she finally spoke publicly about her son’s cancer in 2006, three years after his death.

“I’ve received it on phone calls and even from people who heard me. It really made me realize how serious the issues with inherited health impacts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are,” she said.

She knows that she is now unlikely to cause cancer in her son, but as a mother, she says that guilt is a burden she carries forever.

“I’m still very sorry. I’ll continue to apologize to him. I’ll say ‘Forgive me’,” she said.

The unique burden of Hibakusha’s motherhood was something that Yoshimura Kousuko, now 102 years old, had not been carried.

She was separated from her parents and sister at a young age, and she was always looking forward to her family. She moved to Nagasaki for a good job at Mitsubishi Salary Bureau. Just a few months before the US dropped the bomb, it turned the city into hell of Earth.

“When I got out onto the road, there was someone gushing blood from my head. Those with skin peeled off my back,” she recalled.

With only a kilometre (0.6 miles) away from the epicenter of the explosion, her survival was nothing but a miracle. In the months that followed, she stayed behind to help the injured. However, her body also suffered.

“My hair fell off. Every time I tried to comb my hands, the strands came out little by little,” Yoshimura said. She also regularly vomited blood for months after the explosion.

Still, she endured. She got married a year after the war ended. Her husband, like herself, is an atomic bomb survivor, and their marriage marked a fresh start for the couple.

But the children they never followed never followed. She had two miscarriages and a stillbirth.

Yoshimura lives alone now. Her husband passed away many years ago. In her home in Nagasaki where photos of her children and grandchildren are there are dolls – a quiet substitute for what’s lost, she said.

At their amazing age, Nakamura and Yoshimura know that both of them don’t last long to live. But it gives them greater urgency to educate the younger generation about the sacrifices of nuclear war.

“People need to think really carefully. What does winning or losing bring? We want to expand our country’s territory, we want the country to gain more power, and then what do people want?” Nakamura asked.

“I don’t understand that, but what I feel deeply is the complete stupidity of war,” she said.

Reporter

Hana Common Gomery

Editor

Sheena Mackenzie, Todd Simmons

producer

Junko Ogura

Senior Video Producer

Insert anushfar

Visual Editor

Carlotta dot

Video Editor

Estefania Rodriguez, Daishi Kusunoki