Article 3 Why I like Japan
Another "Letters from Silicon Valley" article that I wrote for a monthly column in ASCII DOS/V
Hello again from California! Some readers have asked me, "Why are you interested in Japan?" The answer is that, like many American computer programmers, I am fascinated by Japanese culture. Not just pop culture (anime and video games), but also traditional culture. Among the things I like are:
Anime (especially films by Mr. Miyazaki, such as My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro).)
Manga. (especially manga by Mr. Fujishima such as Ah My Goddess (Ah Megamisama).)
Movies. (especially films by Mr. Kurasowa such as Yojimbo)
Computer Games. (especially games by SquareSoft such as Final Fantasy VII.)
Computer Hardware. (Portable computers. LCD displays. Color Printers. Digital Cameras.)
Food (Sashimi. Soba Noodles. Obento boxes.)
Graphic Design and Visual Arts. (Calligraphy. Woodworking. Kimono patterns. Paper packages.)
Other Japanese Things (Temples. Tatami mats. Hot springs. Snow Monkeys..)
In addition to Japanese culture, there are several reasons why Japan is important to American computer programmers:
Japanese computer users (like yourself!) buy lots of American software. After America, Japan is probably the single largest market for personal computer software.
Japanese computer users (like yourself!) are very knowledgeable consumers. Thanks in part to detailed reviews in magazines like ASCII, you demand the best software, with the latest features. So we have to pay attention to what you want, and we have to work hard to make sure that our software is appealing to you.
Japanese is a double-byte language. We have to plan carefully so that our programs work correctly in Japanese. For single-byte languages such as German, we don't really have to think very much -- usually a German version of a program works just like the English version. (There are some small differences with currency, time, and text sorting order, but the bulk of the program is usually the same.) But there are many interesting differences when we support Japanese. This means we're always discussing the Japanese language at work, so that we can be sure that our programs will work correctly in Japan.
Programmers are always interested in the latest computer hardware. After all, we spend all day (and most of the night) using our computers. And much of the latest and best computer hardware is made in Japan. We have to wait up to a year to get a chance to buy the latest equipment from Japan. It is common for engineers to come back from business trips to Japan and show off some amazing gadget that they picked up in Akihabara.
Finally, computer user interfaces are becoming increasingly graphical. Sometimes using a computer is like playing a video game. Therefore, computer programmers are becoming more and more interested in visual arts. And Japan is a leader in visual arts and graphic design. (Not just product design, but also more traditional visual arts like brush paintings and architecture and garden design.) Through studying these arts, we are becoming somewhat familiar with Japanese culture.
For the reasons I gave above, Japan is very interesting to me. But, how did I learn about Japan? After all, Mountain View is a long way away from Japan. (I know this because it takes my copy of ASCII DOS/V magazine so long to arrive!) It is not that easy to get information on Japan. There is a local TV channel that broadcasts the NTT nightly news. The same channel also shows a few hours of Japanese TV each night. And there are enough Japanese Americans living here that there are Kinokunia bookstores in both San Francisco and San Jose. But, overall, there's not all that much Japanese information available.
Thank heavens for the Internet! The Internet is a wonderful resource for learning about Japan and the Japanese language. Not surprisingly (given that so many Internet users are college students) there are lots of sites on Japanese pop-culture, especially anime and video games. I myself maintain a web site on the Japanese manga "Taiho Sichau Zo!" at http://www.palevich.com/Taiho/ . Probably the best source of links to English-language anime sites is the Yahoo! web page "http://www.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Comics_and_Animation/Animation/Anime/".
There are also several English-language sites dedicated to information about using the Japanese language on computers. (You probably take Japanese-language Operating System software like DOS/V, Windows 95J, and Japanese Mac-OS for granted, but these programs are hard to find in America.) Some of the best sites are associated with colleges located on the Pacific Rim. For example, Professor Jim Breen of Monash University, Australia, maintains a very good page, including his free Japanese/English dictionary and some free DOS Japanese text programs, at "http://daneel.dgs.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html".
But, lets face it, the majority of the interesting information on Japan is in Japanese! There are thousands of sites in Japan, ranging from personal web sites to giant corporations. If you want to learn about Japan, and you want to keep up with the latest products, there's no substitute for surfing the Japanese web sites!
I have a confession to make: My Japanese language skills are terrible. Everything I know I learned from watching anime, soap operas (does anyone remember "Our House"?) and reading manga. So I know words like "Urasai!" (literally "(you are) noisy" or "(you are) obnoxious", it usually means "Shut up!"), and "Baka!" ("idiot!", "dummy!", "fool!"). The typical Japanese language web page is way too hard for me to understand. I write these articles in English, and then a wonderful translator converts them into Japanese. I would very much like to become fluent in Japanese, but between work and my family, it is not easy to find the time to study! I think it will take me many years to become good at reading the Japanese language.
In the meantime, I wanted very much to read what was on the Japanese web sites. So I devised a plan: I would write a program that could read and display Japanese text, and also allow me to look up Japanese words in Professor Breen's Japanese-to-English dictionary. That way I could, in a primitive way, surf the Japanese part of the web.
I also wanted people on non-DOS computers to be able to use my program. Some of my friends who also like anime use Apple Macintosh, and some use Unix.) So I decided to write the program in Java. That would allow other people to use the program no matter which computer they have.
It took me several months to write the program. I had to go through these steps:
I taught myself how to program in Java. I used the "Symantec Visual Cafe" programming environment.
I learned about the different ways Japanese text is encoded for computer use. Did you know that unix computers use one kind of encoding, called EUC, while MS-DOS computers use another kind, called Shift-JIS?
I wanted my program to be usable even from non-Japanese operating systems. So I had to find a freeware Japanese font, and I had to learn how to render the Japanese characters onto the computer screen.
I learned how to make my program look up words and phrases in Professor Breen's Japanese-English dictionary.
I learned how to read web pages into a computer program. (That's the first tiny step in writing a web browser.)
If you're interested, you can see the result, called "JJReader", and it is at this URL: "http://www.palevich.com/JJReader". It's still a little slow and hard to use, but it is free! JJReader is no match for a human translator. But, it is much more convenient than looking up words by hand in a dictionary. JJReader could never produce a real full translation. All it does is look up words one at a time. However, that is good enough to allow a user to do simple tasks involving specific problem domains: For example, I think users could order a CD from an on-line catalog, or find the latest software drivers for a new printer. And, I am happy because I am able to use it to help me surf Japanese web sites.
Note: I have heard that there are similar programs available that work the other way, that let you surf English sites in Japanese. I haven't used such programs, but I think they are a good idea.
Today the majority of web content is in English. However, over time this may change. Here is what I think will happen in the future: The web will become a standard part of everyday life, and people from many countries will publish information, in their native language, on the web.
The largest, most important, international sites (such as www.netscape.com) will continue to be available in several languages. But it is expensive to translate web content into other languages. So most web pages will be in a single language: the language of the web page author.
The web will, like the printed book market today, be fragmented into many small markets, each serving a particular language. However, unlike the printed book and magazine market, it will be very easy for people to surf to foreign markets. Over time, I think more and more people will attempt to surf in foreign languages. They will use programs like JJReader to help them understand the foreign languages they encounter.
As the internet becomes more pervasive, children will grow up with access to lots of languages. If not too many pages are translated, I think it is possible that more people will become fluent in more than one language. It will be interesting to see which languages become the most popular. (If you want the Japanese language to become more popular, publish an interesting web site!)
Eventually, I think, we will have automatic machine translation. Automatic machine translation, where a computer program converts text from one language to another, is an extremely difficult problem. People have been trying to do this since the early days of computers, with only limited success. While words are easy to look up in a dictionary, more subtle meanings are much harder for the computer to understand. Things like jokes, slang, and topical allusions are almost impossible to translate. Nevertheless, over time these sorts of programs are getting better. Who knows? Perhaps in another forty or fifty years it might be possible for everyone to visit any web page, in any language, and have it automatically translated for them. I think that would be great! In the meantime, I will continue to surf the Japanese web sites with the help of my JJReader program.