One Man vs. the Fax Machine: A Battle to Defeat Old Tech in Japan

These technologies, ranging in age from several decades to several millennia, are holding back growth, according to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, 71, who took office in September and gave Mr. Kono his new assignment as minister of administrative reform.

A quarter-century of email has yet to dent many Japanese bureaucrats’ preference for a piece of paper they can touch, including at Mr. Kono’s government agency. They ask for routine communications to take place by fax and require government forms to be submitted on paper stamped with an ink seal known as a hanko.

“Why do we need to print out paper?” Mr. Kono asked rhetorically at a news conference soon after taking charge of the issue in September. “In many cases, it is simply because the hanko is required. So if we can put a stop to that culture, then it will naturally eliminate the need for printouts and faxes.”

He said, “My job is to clear the road of obstructions to allow the Ferraris and Porsches of digital innovation to speed through.”

Some in his own Liberal Democratic Party say they are worried oxcarts and wheelbarrows might get crushed along the way. A group of lawmakers recently submitted a letter—on paper—to senior government leaders to warn that Japan’s culture of using personal seals in place of signatures was at risk owing to Mr. Kono’s “hasty and excessive move.”

Others say that pressing one’s personal seal to official documents, such as a marriage application at city hall, is an important life moment. Personal seals, which usually display a person’s family name carved into the end of a wooden or plastic stick, were first brought to Japan around 2,000 years ago via China, according to historians. Personal or business seals are used in several countries in Asia.

“We are feeling a sense of crisis that the frequency of hanko use is decreasing,” said Takao Tokui, chairman of the All Japan Seal Industry Association, who recently met with Mr. Kono to request that hanko use continue on official documents such as contracts between companies.

Mr. Kono, whose primary aim is to eliminate hanko use from government business, has already had to exempt Emperor Naruhito from his anti-hanko drive. The palace last year put out a video of the now 60-year-old monarch, wearing a suit and tie as he stamped his gold seal on documents. The palace says the Emperor has two different seals, depending on the type of document.

For years, the government has been pledging to make Japan more digital, such as the office of the prime minister’s 2017 “Declaration to Be the World’s Most Advanced IT Nation.”

Not much happened. Japan ranked 27th in the world for digital competitiveness this year, behind Malaysia and New Zealand, and down four places from 2019, according to IMD business school in Switzerland.

In response to questions from the Journal, Mr. Kono said that it was extremely important that Japan makes progress in digitalization and that he felt “very heavy responsibility” in his new position.

Above all else, the ubiquitous fax machine symbolizes how day-to-day business practices contrast with the nation’s high-tech image. Although faxing remains common in Germany and in some privacy-sensitive parts of the U.S. economy, such as lawyers’ or doctors’ offices, few countries find the high-pitched screech of an incoming fax so alluring.

When one of Japan’s best-known actresses recently decided to get married, her management agency alerted media outlets by fax. A spokeswoman for the agency said it didn’t have plans to stop using faxes. Another major management agency for entertainers asked that questions about faxes be submitted by fax.

In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, some health officials were still writing down Covid-19 information on paper forms and faxing them up the chain of command to the health ministry. Mr. Kono was defense minister then, but he got involved. On April 23, he retweeted a doctor’s post complaining about the process and alerted another official by inserting his Twitter handle. That official said he would take up the issue, and a week later the health ministry announced a new system for online filing of coronavirus cases.

Further wins may not come so easily. Japan’s corporate sector is dominated by small companies with modest technology budgets and preference for the familiar.

Fax machines are irreplaceable, said Takayuki Ogiso, the owner of a furniture shop in the central city of Nagoya. Many of the craftsmen who supply his shop are older and don’t use email, he said. And the 36-year-old Mr. Ogiso said he liked the reliability and physical presence of the fax.

“Faxing ensures that somebody sees what you send,” he said. “If there is a stack of papers in front of you, it means you have that much work to do.”

Still, the pandemic has provided Mr. Kono with a tailwind. The rise in working from home has forced offices to use more digital tools such as Zoom calls with colleagues.

The Georgetown University graduate is often mentioned as a possible future prime minister. He has confirmed the ambition, saying that it has been his ultimate goal since he was first elected to Parliament in 1996.

Prime Minister Suga, who succeeded Shinzo Abe in September, declared overhaul of the bureaucracy his top challenge and named Mr. Kono as the minister who would fix everything.

“Wherever there are problems, I want all of them brought to Mr. Kono for handling on behalf of the nation,” said Mr. Suga in his first press conference as prime minister.

Mr. Kono already has shown a penchant for bold moves, ditching a multibillion-dollar deal to buy an American missile defense system while defense minister without having an alternative in place. He is also one of the few politicians in Japan with a lively Twitter presence, remarking wryly on such anachronisms as an antique cathode-ray-tube television in a colleague’s office and an overseas embassy’s policy of automatically returning any emails sent outside of business hours.

In a recent post, he tried his hand at poetry in musing over defunct technologies. He reflected that “computer disks are no longer floppy” and there is “no more turning of the rotary phone dial.” He didn’t mention the fax machine.

—Megumi Fujikawa and Chieko Tsuneoka contributed to this article.

Write to Alastair Gale at [email protected]