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Japan Pays for Blasi Y2K Plans by Debbi Gardiner

With four months to go to Y2K, some Japanese government officials are in a near panic after months -- years -- of apathy.

The core infrastructures seem ready to confront the millennium bug, but they're beginning to realize this may not be quite enough.

Last week, the Economist pointed out that despite being the world's second-largest industrial economy, Japan lags in Y2K preparedness behind, among others, Thailand and Chile.

As a result, a number of Western tech workers are predicting chaos. Others are tsk-tsking that the compliance tests should all have been conducted months earlier.

"All the fundamental services like banks and power stations are issuing press releases saying they are ready, the tests are over," said Terrie Lloyd, publisher of Computing Japan -- a Tokyo based Internet magazine.

"But it is kind of interesting that most of the infrastructures like air traffic control systems, the traffic signals ... the Tokyo power board, and the Bank of Japan are going to have literally thousands of people on standby [on 31 December]. "The regional banks like Hokkaido and Surega may not be ready either. Twenty percent of hospitals are compliant. Twenty percent said they are not wanting to be compliant," said Lloyd.

But Lloyd contends the biggest clue that things aren't looking good is that no one is issuing compliance certificates. "I think that they are testing stuff but at the same time no one's prepared to say they comply," Lloyd said in a phone interview.

A tech worker in Tokyo, who asked that he be called "Matt," predicts madness for the rollover.

"Only in the last couple of months has it even been on TV or a topic of discussion," he said. "The government has been too busy dealing with the areas of finance and trade and they let this one slip right through the cracks," Matt wrote in an email.

"I think the commercial areas are going to get slapped. Japan is possibly more reliant on technology than any other country in the world. Automatic doors are everywhere, everyone has a cell phone and a beeper. When some of these stop working, there's going to be litigation, costly re-fabrication," Matt added.

The Tokyo papers have been hinting at pretty much the same.

Last month, papers reported that the major banks were ordering thousands of extra futons for management to stay over on the big night.

In a report issued last month, The Daily Yomiuri, an English-language newspaper, found that only 20 percent of the financial sector had contingency plans and 324 of the major government computer systems have Y2K risk management plans.

So what's with all the dilly-dallying? Lloyd reckons that Japan's central government hasn't given much priority to the Y2K compliance tests because ... they don't have to.

"One reason people are worried about Y2K in the United States is because of a fear of massive social unrest," Lloyd said.

"In Japan, the society is so much more ordered [than in the United States] that the government doesn't care enough to spend 60 billion dollars to make sure everything is compliant.... The Japanese government doesn't actually care whether people are without food and water for a few days. The Kobe quake proved that," Lloyd said.

Matt thinks it is merely a case of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil -- a sentiment that he feels is prevalent in Japanese society. "Workers simply cannot tell their bosses when something's screwed up. Confrontation of any kind is almost unheard of still to this day," he wrote.

Nonetheless, other observers aren't alarmed at all, saying there will be no power-outage, Mad-Max scenarios and that Japan will fare just fine, with or without the preparations.

One such optimist is Peter Mulford, president of MYiPlanet, a Japan-focused Internet consulting firm.

"Several Japanese cite the recent simulations run by the Japanese airlines demonstrating the safety of their crafts -- the simulations suggest that nothing will go amiss come the big 2000 -- and most are similarly confident that banks and hospitals won't be affected," Mulford said.

Another big if seems to be JR Railways -- Japan's major railroad. On New Year's Eve, many people are traveling from temples by train, so JR has announced it will stop all of the trains for five minutes at midnight to check that all of the switches are in the appropriate positions.

The Economist noted in its report last week that because Japan computerized its banks and corporate, education, and health sectors much later than the United States, a lot of the software used in Japan is year 2000 compliant. This means that the rollover to the year 2000 could come without a glitch.

Yoshiko Mitsui, a translator for a Japanese-American pharmaceutical firm in Tokyo, said her firm is like every other corporation in the world and takes the Y2K thing very seriously. "There have been IT conferences on preparing us for this each month," Mitsui wrote in an email.

But, Mitsui admitted, there was an air of uncertainty to the whole thing, "because nobody really knows what will happen after they adjust the computer system to the year 2000."

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), September 29, 1999

Answers

Why don't I believe their tales of unbelievable progress?

The more I read, the less I believe that this can even be as low as a 6!

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 29, 1999.

Japan will tank.

-- Randolph (dinosaur@williams-net.com), September 29, 1999.

I remember years ago thinking Japan would buy up this country a piece at a time (starting with the golf courses!) They seemed to be in such a position of power then. Well, times have changed, but I have always considered them to be intelligent. It comes as a surprise that they would have taken the y2k issue lightly. Their entire economy is based on technology.

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), September 30, 1999.

Sounds like its all over but the crying.

-- a (a@a.a), September 30, 1999.

As if Y2K isn't a bad enough problem for the Japanese, they now have the uranium processing plant disaster ongoing. How much longer before Godzilla comes ashore in Tokyo Bay to dine upon the radioactive release?

"Hey Big Guy! You want a few bullet trains full of screaming passengers to go with those radioisotopes? Here lizard, lizard, lizard..."

Y2K will pale in all Japanese media coverage between now and "too late".

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), September 30, 1999.