Fast forward to 2021, and Japanshigh-tech imageis peeling away.
Japan needs a software update, the New York Times tells us.
The countrys octogenarian IT minister, Naokazu Takemoto,has been mockedfor his inability to maintain a functioning website.
And nowhere is this better symbolised than in the countrys ongoing love affair with thefax machine.
Why do representations equating Japan to high technologies persist so tenaciously, despite evidence to the contrary?
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Think here of how neon-lit Tokyo helped inspire Blade Runners aesthetic and Neuromancers television-coloured skies.
Japan entered the modern international orderstaring down the barrelsof cannons mounted on American steamships.
In response, technological development became the cornerstone of Japans national agenda.
This techno-nationalism also served as a fundamental motive for Japans imperial expansion.
But the exuberant postwar bubble would burst.
During the lost decade of the 1990s, Japans economy entered a recession, then shrank.
An ageing population and marked gender and income inequality became the matter of daily headlines.
