From: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) Subject: Japan Report, Part 3: September 1991, Osaka, Tokyo, Yokohama Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1991 06:25:44 GMT Organization: Human Interface Technology Lab, Univ. of Wash., Seattle My Trip Report, Part Three: Osaka, Tokyo, and Yokohama, September 1991 Scratch everything I wrote last month about virtual worlds technology in Japan. My early observation was that Japan's progress in the field would parallel that of researchers elsewhere: it would be halting, with occasional breakthroughs and slow but steady accep- tance by the domestic industry. What I learned on my last trip to Japan, conducted from 22-29 September 1991, has convinced me that Japan's future involvement in the virtual worlds business will be significant, substantial, and quite possibly immediate. This third of my three trips this year was as a stand-in for the HIT Lab's executive director, Dr. Thomas Furness, who was scheduled to speak at the Osaka conference, Computer World 91, sponsored by the Kansai Institute for Information Science. The conference, held on 24- 26 September, featured a coming together of researchers working in the fields of interface and AI technology. (This type of awkward combination results from a popular perception that there is a close relation between the two domains, which can be debated.) Unfortunately, the audience for Computer World 91, which is supposed to demonstrate the Kansai province's industrial and intellectual equality with the Tokyo region, was not well-attended. However, the conference was held during the workweek, so some falling off could be expected. The stimulating keynote was delivered by Dr. Michael Cooley, one of the directors of the European Community's FAST Project. FAST studies the impacts of information technology on the quality of life, in the workplace and during leisure, and has recently become quite influential with the EC as it promotes what used to be called "appropriate technology." Cooley, who is a remarkably erudite and extremely literate Welshman, gained some infamy in industry circles when he led a workers revolt at the Lucas Company, manufacturer of electronic goods. (Under Cooley's direction as chief designer, the workers, who feared massive downsizing after a corporate takeover, came up with over 100 new product prototypes that could be profitably manufactured by Lucas. Despite this unprecedented accomplishment, Cooley was not appreciated by his new employers, who resented his intrusion on their managerial turf; and he was let go.) Cooley's speech at Computer World 91 was truly outstanding, but it probably suffered a bit in translation. The English-speakers in the audience were impressed by Cooley's call for intelligent, people- centered design. This was a theme I would hear repeated many times over in the ensuing days. Most of the Computer World panels were focused on narrow topics of limited interest to me, like computer-vision and CASE methods. The one presentation which I HAD to attend was delivered by ATR's Nobuji Tetsutani, a senior researcher in the AI Department who explained the workings of the ATR version of the Video Window. This wall-size display simulates 3D presence and uses head and eye-tracking to position the video presentation. ATR's eye- tracking technology uses an "area of interest" technique to reduce computational requirements, at a steep price in terms of the user's experience of inclusion. When I pointed out the disparity that area- of-interest techniques would produce for the user, in terms of reduced sense of presence, Tetsutani-san replied, none too convincingly, "That's an issue to be resolved when we go to 3D presentations. We in Japan are still working in 2D, unlike you in the U.S. [!]" (Pardon my skepticism...) Unfortunately, time constraints prevented me from accepting AI Department Head Fumio Kishino's invitation to visit ATR and see what they're really up to at that esteemed establishment. However, for those fortunate to travel to Japan, ATR should be on your itinerary. It is, everyone told me it, where things are happening. While in Osaka I visited the headquarters of Matsushita Electronic Industry's excellent design team led by Dr. Junji Nomura. This energetic group of young men and, equally, young women has built the SVirtual Kitchen," part of a larger sales-to-manufacturing system that Dr. Nomura is successfully promoting to Matsushita's executive corps. The essence of this system (of which only part, the showroom simulation, was featured at SIGGRAPH 91) is to link con- sumers directly to the manufacturing process. In theory, as one peruses and selects items from the virtual kitchen, idea goes, signals are transmitted to CAM factories for immediate production and dis- tribution of the product to the consumer. Obviously, such a system can be translated into many commercial sectors beyond home goods; and this is Dr. Nomura's intent. Nightlife in Osaka is slightly less hectic than in Tokyo, but with no less attention to the quality of the dining experience. (The beer bars looked a bit more restrained, too.) I had dinner with Dr. Nomura and his center director, a charming man, Mr. Ishizawa, who recited this bit of Matsushita corporate wisdom to me: "Be neither too near nor too far," a phrase first spoken at the turn of the century by Mr. Matsushita himself. Mr. Ishizawa interpreted this directive to mean "about three years -- three years from the start of a project, we should see a return from our work. Not sooner, not later." Evidently, we are now in year one of "Cooking in Dr. Nomura's Virtual Kitchen...." After traveling to Tokyo (I HIGHLY recommend enthusiastic ANA over stodgy JAL, as do my Japanese friends), I had lunch in the Mitsui Club with Mitsui & Co. Technical Division deputy director Mr. Matsuo and my fax friend, Mr. Okuda of the Life Science wing, now renamed like "Human Technology Branch." (Oops, there's that "human" thing again! What does this signify, I wondered? I would find out soon. More below....) Mitsui, as mentioned in an earlier posting, is a huge company with annual revenues over $100 billion. We discussed the many changes going on within Mitsui and Japan's other *sogo shoshan,* the big trading companies. Apparently, technology-research divisions like Mssrs. Matsuo's and Okuda's are fast assuming greater importance in the Japanese corporate scheme of things, as industry shifts from merely doing "more of the same, better" to "better, and more of it." And artificial reality (i.e., virtual worlds technology) is something in which both Mr. Matsuo and Mr. Okuda find much "betterness." I expect to see Mitsui moving in this arena before too long. That afternoon, I travelled to visit Dr. M. Kawahata, executive director of the Fujitsu Research Institute. This was a short business visit, capped with an after-hours schmooze around a very long table, The entire FRI downtown staff was there, and once more I enjoyed a sense of "intimate community" too often absent at the usual cocktail parties in the U.S. Friday was the day of major revelations. I had planned to visit with Hitachi, but the hours were drawing short and leaving Japan via Narita International Airport requires two and sometime three hours of preflight formalities, so I restricted my touring to the Nomura Research Institute (NRI) in Yokohama, another city contending for the role of industrial leader in Japan.. I had been contacted by a U.S. representative of NRI before leaving the U.S., to arrange an interview at the HIT Lab. Instead, I visited at the NRI headquarters building -- a truly inspiring piece of architecture, as unusual in Japan as it would have been in the U.S. My host was Dr. Makoto Yokozawa, NRI Technology Manage- ment Strategy Department, a nuclear engineer by training, who was completing a report on *kansei* media for a consortium of 12 large companies. Later we were joined by his superior, Mr. Sawaaki Yamada, manager and senior consultant in the department. Together, in the third week of October, they will present their report on kansei media to the sponsor groups, who will decide on the appropriate technologies in which they will invest and which they will develop over this decade. Artificial reality is one of those kansei technologies at the top of the list. At last, the Japanese industrial establishment is prepared to enter the field, in a big way. Howard Rheingold, in VIRTUAL REALITY, was off by about a year: the real progress in Japan is now about to begin. So what is this kansei, around which all of the industrial initia- tives are organized? It's a way of seeing things, perhaps derived from the Shinto tradition of reverence for nature. Kansei is many things: harmony with the environment, sensibility, resonance, sensitivity -- in Western terms, weakly, "friendliness." Kansei is the new theme in Japan. After two decades of merely building machines, the Japanese now have decided to focus on the person. MITI's new "Human Technology Project," funded to the tune of $150 million, applies kansei principles across the universe of consumer products including automobiles, educational systems, home appliances, and media. (I remember the glee with which American analysts greeted MITI's 1990 announcement that it would focus on meeting human needs, rather than blindly pursuing industrial development. These analysts thought that Japan was faltering in its vision. Far from it. The vision has grown, perhaps unrecognizably so to those stuck in the past.) Thus, multimedia, which allegedly responds more closely to human information-processing behavior, is targeted as the next immediate goal of the Japanese information industry ... and, after that, artificial reality follows. In firm after firm, I was struck by the almost unanimous Japanese adherence to the concept of kansei and the firms' confident understanding of its implications for industry in the 1990s and beyond. I promised not to reveal the precise contents of our discussion at NRI, except to announce these general themes. A short paper on the general topic, _The Human Technology Project in Japan,_ authored by Yamada-san and Harold E. (Smoke) Price, an American living in New Mexico, is available from NRI. (The address is Nomura Research Institute, Ltd., 134, Godo-cho, Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240, Japan; fax, (81) (45) 336-1403.) As one researcher at the HIT Lab noted on reading the brief, "there's nothing profound about any of this. It's commonly known." Yes, but in Japan, it is not only known but also being acted upon. Like "quality control," a concept deve- loped in the U.S., "human technology" -- "the practical use of high technology to fulfill the demand for more and higher-level human needs -- has become a Japanese property. Ironically, this bodes well for American and European researchers in the virtual worlds field, who already adhere to the human-technology perspective. Convincing our domestic industries to adopt this paradigm for the most part has been like pulling teeth. Finally, there will be resources available to us, from Japan, to produce the products and services we believe will improve the quality of life and ultimately (we hope) the human condition. But this means that we in the West must rapidly improve our own design methods and technology, so that we can deal as equals with our colleagues in the East. This may be a tall order for a bud- ding R&D community, but for me the message was clear as I boarded my tired old Continental DC-10, the last to make the Tokyo-Seattle run: now is our time. Neither too near nor too far. Sayonara. --