Giga Games 1/Giga Games.iso/net/vir_real/papers/jacobson/bobjapan.3

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91-10/Bob.Japan.3
From: [e-mail] (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.
--