Japan's love affair with the fax machine – a strange relic of technological fantasies

By Hansun Hsiung, Assistant Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University

With Japan riding the crest of its postwar economic miracle, Sony chairman Akio Morita and Japan’s Minister of Transport Shintarō Ishihara unleashed a manifesto. The document, published in 1989, contained a prophecy that propelled it to domestic bestseller status, and into the concerned hands of officials at the CIA.

At the time, the authors noted, the American and Soviet superpowers had become “dependent on the initiative of the Japanese people” in developing new technology,…

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