The Last Engineers: A Record of Vanishing IT Traditions (7)
Episode 7: Dedicated Word Processors
A device born solely to write Japanese, which eventually became a machine for evading responsibility with boxes and arrows
This article is a documentary-style creative column that begins with a reader's question. While not based on an actual program interview, it is structured by layering the atmosphere that once existed in Japanese technical workplaces with questions about the current AI era.
In the first episode, I spoke with Mamoru Kodai about fuzzy logic.
An era when machines were trying to understand human 'vague' intuition. There, one could find engineers who did not mock human ambiguity.
In the second episode, I spoke with Shiro Sanada about assemblers.
Registers, addresses, interrupts, clocks. It was a story of an era when humans took on the machine's needs right alongside machine language.
In the third episode, I spoke with Juzo Okita about COBOL.
Abacuses, bank figures, currency counting, ATMs, overnight batches, land myths. COBOL was a language that transferred the physical skills of bank clerks and the memories of society into machines.
In the fourth episode, I spoke with Hikozaemon Tokugawa about TRON.
Domestic OS, Super 301, trade wars, Huawei, and the AI myth. TRON was the memory of engineers who tried to design the engine room of society themselves.
In the fifth episode, I spoke with Giichi Aihara about FAX machines.
The FAX was not a machine for sending paper. It was a machine for sending responsibility. From an era where money moved with a single sheet of paper to an era where markets are shaken by a few lines on social media. The form of information warfare has changed, but human gullibility has not.
In the sixth episode, I spoke with Yasuo Nanbu about FORTRAN.
FORTRAN was not a dead language. Weather, fluid dynamics, structures, nuclear power, space development, supercomputers. It was a language that preserved mathematical formulas that withstood reality within machines.
In the seventh episode, I am visiting the dedicated word processor.
Bungo.
OASYS.
Shoin.
Rupo.
Thumb-shift.
Kana-kanji conversion.
Vertical writing.
Ruled lines.
External characters.
New Year's cards.
Floppy disks.
Thermal paper.
Dedicated word processors.
They were machines born solely to write Japanese.
However, this story does not end with dedicated machines alone.
Eventually, the place where Japanese was written shifted from dedicated machines to personal computers.
The PC-9801.
MS-DOS.
Ichitaro.
ATOK.
And, Hanako.
Ichitaro was not a dedicated word processor.
It was word processing software that ran on a personal computer.
However, for many users, the PC-9801 was not an all-purpose computer.
It was an expensive machine that took time to boot, had cumbersome commands, and made you feel a bit nervous doing anything on it.
But if you launched Ichitaro, you could create Japanese documents.
In other words, for many people at the time, the PC-9801 was simply an 'expensive word processor that had become harder to use.'
They didn't buy a personal computer.
They bought a box to run Ichitaro.
And on top of that box, another incident occurred.
Hanako.
To everyone's surprise, you could draw lines.
By today's standards, you might laugh at this.
Drawing a line.
Drawing a square.
Placing an arrow.
What was the big deal about placing a diagram next to text?
But on a machine that was thought to be for writing text, you could freely draw lines.
You could create boxes.
Arrows could extend.
You could arrange shapes and text together.
That was an event that changed the world of Japanese documents.
Documents began to change from things to be read into things to be shown.
And from here, Japanese documents began to move, little by little, in a strange direction.
Write text.
Organize sentences.
Insert tables.
Enclose in boxes.
Connect with arrows.
Write 'Future Vision' in the upper right.
Place 'Current Issues' in the lower left.
Place 'Comprehensive and Integrated Promotion' in the center.
Place 'Coordination with Related Agencies' at the bottom.
In this way, Japanese documents turned into diagrams.
And there is a place where that technique was most refined.
Kasumigaseki.
This time, the question sent in by a reader was as follows.
"I feel like old dedicated word processors had a unique ease of writing. Even though PCs and smartphones are overwhelmingly more convenient, why do people still miss machines like the Bungo, OASYS, or Shoin? When you include Ichitaro, Hanako, and even the 'ponchi-e' (diagram) culture of Kasumigaseki, I feel that the history of machines for writing Japanese is more than just mere nostalgia."
To trace this question, we visited a former word processor developer.
A residential area in the suburbs.
Yuki Mori, 72, lives in a study in a house beyond an old row of cherry trees.
He is an engineer who was once involved in the development of Japanese input, conversion dictionaries, screen design, vertical writing display, external character processing, and printing functions in the dedicated word processor development department of a domestic electronics manufacturer.
After that, he says he was also involved in supporting the introduction of document systems during the period when Japanese document creation environments for PCs were becoming widespread.
On his desk, an old dedicated word processor was placed.
A yellowed chassis.
A small LCD screen.
A heavy keyboard.
A floppy disk placed to the side.
A thermal transfer printer ribbon.
A manual for New Year's card software.
A dictionary registration card.
A thick file labeled 'List of External Characters'.
And on the back of the shelf, old manuals for the PC-9801 and guidebooks for Ichitaro and Hanako were lined up.
Mr. Mori first turned on the power to the dedicated word processor.
A small startup sound.
A screen close to black.
Characters slowly appear on it.
"This machine, you see, wakes up only to write text."
Waking up only to write text.
In those words lay the essence of the machine known as the dedicated word processor.
Today's PCs can do anything.
Write text.
Read emails.
Watch videos.
Check social media.
Check stock prices.
Consult with AI.
Shop.
Create documents.
Hold meetings.
Receive notifications.
Being able to do anything also means that anything can interrupt you.
Dedicated word processors were different.
Write text.
Save.
Print.
Basically, that was all there was to it.
Mr. Mori lightly stroked the keyboard.
"It was inconvenient. But that inconvenience was good. Because what you could do was limited, you couldn't escape from writing. There was no other world on the other side of the screen."
No other world on the other side of the screen.
This is quite a heavy statement for a modern writer.
Nowadays, when you open a computer to write, another world immediately rises up.
Email.
Notifications.
SNS.
News.
Videos.
Chat.
AI.
Ads.
Search results.
The screen you opened to write has become a window that prevents you from writing.
Dedicated word processors did not have that.
A small screen.
Limited character count.
Slow conversion.
Simple menus.
Floppy disks for storage.
Paper for printing.
It is inconvenient.
However, within that inconvenience, there was focus.
"Dedicated word processors were also machines that confined the writer. But the way they confined you was a little gentle. They were machines that told you, 'You are here to write right now.'"
Before dedicated word processors appeared, machines for writing Japanese were not simple.
If it were just alphanumeric characters, there would be typewriters.
However, Japanese has kanji.
It has hiragana.
It has katakana.
It has punctuation marks.
It has vertical writing.
It has furigana.
It has okurigana.
It has homophones.
It has personal names.
It has place names.
It has custom characters.
"Making a machine write Japanese was a more difficult task than one might think."
Mr. Mori opened some old conversion dictionary materials.
There, notes on candidate words, frequency, parts of speech, readings, learning, and priority rankings were lined up.
"If it were just changing kana to kanji, it might seem simple. But when you type 'hashi', is it bridge, chopsticks, or edge? When you type 'kousei', is it composition, fairness, or welfare? How much context do you look at? How do you arrange the candidates? That changes the writer's mood."
Kana-kanji conversion was not merely an input aid.
It was a technology that permeated the very act of writing Japanese.
Conversion candidates guide the text.
Dictionaries change how words are chosen.
Learning functions memorize the writer's habits.
The order of candidates gradually alters the writing style.
Mr. Mori smiled slightly.
"Conversion is, you see, the machine chiming in from the side of the writer. If it chimes in modestly, it becomes a good assistant. If it is pushy, it ruins the text. That was the difficult part."
These words hold true even in the age of AI.
Now, AI writes text.
It suggests paraphrasing.
It creates headlines.
It organizes structure.
It corrects typos.
It standardizes writing style.
That is convenient.
However, convenient suggestions can also erase the writer's unique habits.
Mr. Mori showed me an old dictionary registration card.
On it were registered technical terms, personal names, place names, internal company abbreviations, and coined words by authors.
"Dictionary registration was the work of the writer pulling the machine toward themselves. Instead of writing to match the machine, you made the machine learn your own words. There was a little bit of agency in that."
Making the machine learn your own words.
Are we not doing the opposite now?
Choosing words to match the machine's candidates.
Typing sentences to align with predictive conversion.
Accepting AI's polished phrasing.
Adjusting to expressions that are easily searchable.
Trimming text to lengths that are easily conveyed on social media.
Of course, that is not entirely a bad thing.
However, in Mr. Mori's era, there was at least a sense of teaching the machine your own words.
Dedicated word processors were struggling with the Japanese language.
Vertical writing.
Horizontal writing.
Line-breaking rules.
Punctuation hanging.
Ruby characters.
Justification.
Ruled lines.
Table formatting.
Manuscript paper.
Postcard printing.
Address printing.
External character creation.
They were trying to incorporate the culture of Japanese documentation into the machine.
Mr. Mori opened the 'External Character List' file.
There, handwritten characters are lined up.
Old character forms.
Kanji for personal names.
Kanji used only in place names.
Special characters for company names.
Variant characters.
The one-dot 'shinnyo' radical in surnames.
The 'ladder' variant of the character 'taka'.
The 'tsuchi' variant of the character 'kichi'.
'Gaiji (external characters) are, you see, the places where machines lost to the Japanese language.'
Mr. Mori said that.
The characters do not exist within the machine.
However, there are people who use those characters.
There are people living with those names.
That land exists.
That company exists.
That family line exists.
So, we create them.
Create the external character.
Register it.
Print it.
Save it to a floppy disk.
It won't appear on other machines.
If the handover fails, it disappears.
'External characters were a hassle. But precisely because they were a hassle, there was also a sense that one must not treat people's names carelessly. Nowadays, when characters become garbled, it is sometimes dismissed as a system issue. But in reality, it is the opposite. The machine must adapt to human names.'
These words well represent the philosophy of dedicated word processors.
Dedicated word processors were not merely machines that made Japanese more efficient.
They were machines that attempted to take on the hassle of the Japanese language within the machine itself.
And within that hassle lay the essence of the act of writing Japanese.
Eventually, dedicated word processors spread into homes.
Company documents.
Neighborhood association notices.
School handouts.
Community association announcements.
PTA materials.
Newsletters.
Haiku collections.
Haiku.
Tanka.
New Year's cards.
Doujinshi.
Circulation boards.
Dedicated word processors were not tools only for professional writers.
They were machines that allowed ordinary people to format and print text.
Mr. Mori picked up a manual for New Year's card software.
'New Year's cards were a big deal, weren't they? Creating an address book. Printing addresses. Inserting zodiac illustrations. Aligning the sender's information. That was how word processors entered the home.'
New Year's cards.
It was a small DTP revolution in Japanese households.
From handwriting to printing.
From rubber stamps to address printing.
From address books to mail merge.
A strange coexistence of handmade charm and mechanization.
Dedicated word processors changed the end of the year in Japan.
"Back then, the family would gather in front of the machine to make New Year's cards. Who should we send them to? Who is in mourning? Has anyone moved? The printing was misaligned. The ribbon snapped. The paper jammed. Thinking about it now, it was inconvenient. But there was a family event in that."
It was inconvenient, yet it remains in our memories.
When things become convenient, the work disappears.
When the work disappears, the memories attached to that work also disappear.
Opening the address book.
Checking last year's New Year's cards.
Listening to the sound of the printer.
Drying them one by one.
Setting aside the failed postcards.
Writing just one sentence by hand at the end.
Such tasks have disappeared from the home.
And after the dedicated word processor, the main battlefield for Japanese documents shifted to the personal computer.
It was the era of the PC-9801.
Mr. Mori took an old MS-DOS manual off the shelf.
"The PC-9801 was a personal computer. But for many people, rather than a computer, it was a machine for running Ichitaro. You can do spreadsheets. You can do communications. You can write programs. Even when explained that way, from the user's perspective, the most important thing was whether or not you could create Japanese documents."
The black screen of MS-DOS.
A>
B>
DIR
COPY
FORMAT
For office workers and document creators, those strings of text were less of a gateway to the future and more of a checkpoint.
The computer, which was supposed to be convenient, looked more troublesome than a dedicated word processor.
Insert the disk.
Boot it up.
Type the command.
Launch the software.
Be aware of the save destination.
Worry about print settings.
Facing an expensive computer, there must have been many people who thought this:
The word processor was easier.
Mr. Mori gave a wry smile.
"The PC-9801 was a machine that could do anything. But being able to do anything also meant not knowing what you should do with it. It was only because of Ichitaro that the machine was finally understood as a tool for writing documents."
This was the seismic impact of Ichitaro.
Ichitaro was not a dedicated word processor.
It was Japanese word processing software that ran on MS-DOS.
However, Ichitaro transformed the PC-9801 into a 'practical machine' within the office.
Approval requests.
Notifications.
Meeting minutes.
Specifications.
Contracts.
Internal newsletters.
Invitations.
Application forms.
Legal documents.
Japanese documents began to function in earnest within the personal computer.
Mr. Mori said, while opening an old Ichitaro manual.
"If the Bungo and OASYS supported the Japanese language for homes, writers, and offices, Ichitaro supported the Japanese language for organizations. Japanese documents became tools of the system within the personal computer."
Tools of the system.
From here, Japanese documents began to change in nature little by little.
In the era of dedicated word processors, Japanese documents were primarily 'things to be written.'
However, once they entered an organization, documents became 'things to be pushed through.'
Pushing through an approval request.
Pushing through a meeting.
Pushing through a budget.
Pushing through a subsidy.
Pushing through a bill.
Making it look like accountability was pushed through.
Passing the buck of responsibility on to the next department.
Japanese documents do not exist solely to be read.
They exist within an organization to be approved.
And there is a place that has honed the technique of these 'documents to be pushed through' in the most peculiar way.
Kasumigaseki.
In 2024, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that young bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki are attempting to inherit the craftsmanship of Ichitaro in the drafting of bills.
In daily operations, Word is often used.
However, Ichitaro is used for drafting bills.
Moreover, this is not merely a matter of software preference. It is said that young bureaucrats are racking their brains to pass down the techniques for creating legislative documents.
It is said that Mr. Mori smiled a little when he read that article.
"See, it still remains. This is not nostalgia. It means that Ichitaro is still alive in the depths of the nation's document-making practices."
Ichitaro was not an old piece of software.
At least in Kasumigaseki, it was a quiet machine tool for organizing the state's command documents known as bills.
Where to insert a line break.
Where to insert a table.
Which lines to align.
Which words to shift.
Which notes to keep.
Which format will pass the review.
Which layout will constitute an explanation.
Here, a document is not merely a string of characters.
It is a bill.
It is a system.
It is a budget.
It is a responsibility.
And sometimes, it is a structure for diluting responsibility.
Mr. Mori lowered his voice slightly.
"It is not a technique for writing sentences. It is a technique for getting documents approved. There, Ichitaro is less of a tool and more of a protocol."
Protocol.
This word describes Ichitaro in Kasumigaseki well.
Even though it is software, it becomes a protocol.
Even though it is a tool, it becomes a style.
Even though it is an operation, it becomes something to be inherited.
And young bureaucrats must learn that craftsmanship.
Here, the story of dedicated word processors enters an entirely different world.
It was supposed to be a story about machines for writing Japanese.
It is becoming a story about machines that move the nation in Japanese.
And then, Hanako appears there.
Mr. Mori opened an old manual for Hanako.
The cover is lined with shapes that evoke a sense of the past.
Circles.
Squares.
Lines.
Arrows.
Callouts.
Hierarchical diagrams.
Process charts.
Mr. Mori said, with a hint of exaggeration.
"In Hanako, you could draw lines."
That sounds like a joke now.
However, in the document creation environment of that time, being able to draw a line was a major event.
It wasn't just text.
You could draw diagrams.
You could create boxes.
You could show relationships with arrows.
You could introduce visual structure into a document.
It was convenient.
And, it was too convenient.
"Once people could draw lines, they wanted to draw lines. Once they could create boxes, they wanted to put words in them. Once they could draw arrows, they wanted to make things look connected. From there, Japanese documents gradually changed from things to be read into things to be looked at."
Documents to be looked at.
From here on, Kasumigaseki makes an appearance.
The place in Japan that most refined the 'document to be looked at.'
That is Kasumigaseki.
In Kasumigaseki, there are not people who write text, but people who get documents approved.
Mr. Mori lowered his voice slightly.
"In Kasumigaseki, you see, there are craftsmen who create documents. They are not people who write text. They are people who get documents approved."
People who get documents approved.
There was a strange weight to those words.
Kasumigaseki materials have a unique world of their own.
Heading.
Bullet point.
Border line.
Arrow.
Dotted line.
Double line.
Ellipse.
Process chart.
Issue.
Response policy.
Future direction.
Consideration.
Promotion.
Collaboration.
Sophistication.
Visualization.
Infrastructure development.
Public-private integration.
Regional implementation.
Horizontal deployment.
It is text, yet it is not text.
It is a diagram, yet it is not a diagram.
Is it policy?
Is it an explanatory document?
Is it a device for avoiding responsibility?
Is it a vision of the future?
Is it a prayer charm for the Ministry of Finance?
The name changes depending on who is looking at it.
Generally, it is called a 'ponchi-e' (conceptual diagram).
Mr. Mori took a single sheet of paper from a stack of old documents.
Boxes are lined up.
Arrows are extending.
In the top right, 'Future Vision'
In the bottom left, 'Current Issues'
In the center, 'Comprehensive and Integrated Promotion'
At the bottom, 'Collaboration with Related Organizations'
It is a shape I have seen somewhere before.
It is a shape I have seen so often that I no longer see anything at all.
'Ponchi-e are mysterious things. Text carries too much responsibility. Numbers are too rigid for explanation. So, boxes and arrows appear. You write "Promotion" inside a box, and "Growth" at the tip of an arrow. Then, it looks like something is moving forward.'
It looks like something is moving forward.
This one sentence contains almost all of Japan's administrative document culture since the Heisei era.
Mr. Mori continues.
'Ichitaro organized the organization's documents. Hanako gave them lines, boxes, and arrows. But Kasumigaseki went even further. They turned documents into diagrams, diagrams into policies, and policies into arrows with thin accountability.'
Here, the name JXW comes up.
'If someone said there are still "ponchi-e" craftsmen in Kasumigaseki using JXW, no one would be truly surprised. Truth or not, the story fits strangely well. That is the terror of this country's administrative document culture.'
Old graphic creation environment.
Unique operation system.
Mysterious templates.
Inherited files.
Borders created by someone unknown.
Margins that get you scolded if you delete them.
Notes that remain in the top right for some reason.
Arrows that follow precedent.
Boxes that multiply as their meaning thins out.
These are not merely problems of old software.
They are a problem of what an organization trusts as a document.
Dedicated word processors were born to write Japanese.
Ichitaro turned Japanese into organizational documents.
Hanako gave Japanese lines, boxes, and arrows.
And Kasumigaseki used them to turn Japanese into a device for diffusing responsibility.
Mr. Mori wore a slightly ironic expression here.
If it's a sentence, you need a subject. Who is doing it? What are they doing? By when will they do it? But when it becomes a diagram, the subject escapes into a box. It looks like the arrows are carrying responsibility, but in reality, they sometimes don't reach anywhere.
This might seem like a story far removed from dedicated word processors.
However, it is not far at all.
Dedicated word processors were machines for writing Japanese.
Ichitaro was a machine for turning Japanese into institutional documents.
Hanako was a machine for turning Japanese into diagrams.
The diagrams of Kasumigaseki were devices for getting Japanese approved.
And all of that leads to the question of what machines make Japanese do.
Writing Japanese.
Organizing Japanese.
Applying in Japanese.
Seeking approval in Japanese.
Obfuscating responsibility in Japanese.
Talking about the future in Japanese.
Securing a budget in Japanese.
Pretending something was done in Japanese.
Words become records.
But words also become smoke screens.
Mr. Mori stared at the screen of the old word processor.
Old word processors were machines that faced the writer. Perhaps today's document creation environments have become machines that face the organization. Whether the document gets approved becomes more important than what the writer wants to say. I feel that Japanese has changed little by little from that.
Dedicated word processors were eventually replaced by personal computers.
Windows.
Word.
Ichitaro.
Internet.
Email.
High-performance printers.
Digital cameras.
Smartphones.
Cloud.
AI.
The personal computer was a machine that could do anything.
It could write documents.
It could handle spreadsheets.
It could process images.
It could communicate.
It could print.
It could draw diagrams.
There was no way a dedicated word processor could win against that.
Mr. Mori said calmly.
"A machine that can only write will lose to a machine that can do anything. That cannot be helped. But there were things that only a machine dedicated to writing could do."
Things that only a machine dedicated to writing could do.
That is, not doing anything unnecessary.
No notifications.
No advertisements.
No luring into videos.
No showing news.
No displaying other people's reactions.
No escaping to search results.
No over-polishing text with AI suggestions.
No shirking responsibility by hiding behind boxes and arrows in clip art.
It just makes you write.
That is all.
"A dedicated word processor was a room for writing. A personal computer is a multi-tenant building in front of a train station. It has everything. It is convenient. But it is a bit too noisy for writing."
This metaphor resonated with me strangely well.
A room for writing.
That is precisely why there were people who could not let go of their dedicated word processors.
Writers.
Proofreaders.
Haiku poets.
Tanka poets.
Neighborhood association newsletter editors.
School teachers.
Corporate general affairs staff.
Small shop owners.
People self-publishing books.
People writing family histories.
People writing their wills.
There was a sense of security in not being connected to the internet.
Nothing leaks out.
No notifications.
No automatic syncing.
No being sucked up into the cloud.
No anxiety about potentially becoming training data for AI.
Mr. Mori said quietly.
"Nowadays, writing and sending are too close. You write, and you can send it immediately. You send it, and you get a reaction immediately. It is convenient. But writing also requires time to let it sit before sending."
Writing and sending are too close.
This is also a problem with writing in the age of social media.
Write.
Post immediately.
Check reactions immediately.
Look at likes.
Look at comments.
Edit.
Delete.
Write again.
Writing goes out into the world before it has a chance to mature inside oneself.
With dedicated word processors, it didn't go out so easily.
Save.
Print.
Read over.
Mark up with red ink.
Retype.
Print again.
It is troublesome.
However, that trouble gave the writing time.
Mr. Mori began to talk about the Pomera there.
"I don't think it's a coincidence that the Pomera still exists. It's like the grandchild of a dedicated word processor. Of course, the contents are completely different. But the philosophy is similar. You open it only to write. You don't escape to the internet. There are still people who feel value in that."
Pomera.
A small keyboard.
A tool for writing.
A machine that keeps its distance from the internet.
It is not just a gadget.
In an age where you can do anything, it is a tool that dares to choose not to do everything.
Even after dedicated word processors disappeared, that philosophy did not completely vanish.
I want to focus on writing.
I want to get away from notifications.
I want to draft outside the cloud.
I don't want to show my writing to anyone yet.
I want to quietly nurture my own words inside a machine.
That demand still remains today.
Rather, in the AI era, its meaning has changed slightly.
AI will write text for you.
A plausible introduction.
A well-organized structure.
Natural phrasing.
Easy-to-read headings.
A safe conclusion.
That is convenient.
However, amidst all this convenience, the writer's resistance is easily lost.
Mr. Mori pressed a key on the old word processor.
"Writing should have a bit of resistance. If you write only with words that come to mind instantly, the writing will vanish just as quickly. You should struggle with conversions. You should hesitate over phrasing. You should print it out and read it over. That time is what makes the writing truly your own."
It is not that AI is bad.
It is not that personal computers are bad.
It is not that smartphones are bad.
However, we must consider the fact that the friction that once surrounded the act of writing has disappeared far too quickly.
The time spent waiting for conversion.
The time spent choosing candidates.
The time spent registering words in the dictionary.
The time spent printing and rereading.
The time spent confirming where to save.
The time spent folding paper and putting it into an envelope.
These were not merely inefficiencies.
They were also the time during which the writing passed through the writer's body.
Mr. Mori says:
"Dedicated word processors were machines that made you write quickly. But they were not machines that made you release things into the world quickly. That is where they differ from today's tools."
Writing quickly and releasing quickly are different things.
Dedicated word processors were machines for refining text.
Ichitaro was a machine for channeling text through an organization.
Hanako was a machine for turning text into lines and boxes.
Social media is a machine for releasing text.
AI is a machine for generating text.
The 'ponchi-e' (conceptual diagrams) of Kasumigaseki are an administrative art form that turns text into diagrams with diluted responsibility.
All of them involve words.
However, each demands a different attitude from the human.
Dedicated word processors demanded that you face the writer within yourself.
Social media demands that you watch for reactions.
AI demands that you give instructions.
Conceptual diagrams demand that you get things approved.
So, what is writing?
Mr. Mori was silent for a while.
And then, he said this.
"Writing is the act of giving shape to the vague things within oneself. Machines help us. But in the end, the human must take responsibility for choosing which words to use."
This statement also leads us back to the fuzzy logic mentioned in the first installment.
Human ambiguity.
How do we pass that on to a machine?
Dedicated word processors took on that question at the very site of writing.
Converting kana to kanji.
Choosing words.
Refining sentences.
Formatting vertically.
Printing.
Leaving it on paper.
In that process, the machine did not think on behalf of the writer.
It created a space for the writer to think.
That is precisely why dedicated word processors are still remembered with nostalgia.
It is not merely a memory of the Bungo, OASYS, Shoin, or Rupo.
It is a memory of an era when writing was still a standalone task.
Opening the machine to write.
Staying there until finished.
Saving.
Printing.
Reading it over.
Correcting it.
We are losing that quiet time.
Meanwhile, organizational documentation has moved in a different direction.
Japanese for getting things approved.
Japanese for diluting responsibility.
Japanese for drawing the future with boxes and arrows.
Japanese for promoting reviews, strengthening coordination, and facilitating visualization.
And deep within that, the ghosts of old document creation environments still linger.
It might be JXW.
It might be Ichitaro.
It might be Hanako.
It might be Word's drawing tools.
It might be PowerPoint.
Or perhaps it is some nameless ministry template.
What matters is not the name of the software.
What matters is that in Kasumigaseki, a group of 'ponchi-e' (sketch) artisans who try to move the nation with boxes and arrows is still alive today.
Mr. Mori finally picked up an old floppy disk.
On the label, it was written by hand as follows.
The Manuscript
There is no further explanation.
There are no dates, version numbers, cloud syncs, or shared links.
Just the manuscript.
Mr. Mori said:
"First, let me see your conversion dictionary. The writer's worldview remains there. Next, let me see your Hanako lines. From there, the document became a diagram. Finally, let me see your Kasumigaseki-style conceptual drawings. There, you can see where the organization shifted its responsibility."
Episode 7: The Dedicated Word Processor.
It is the story of a machine born solely to write Japanese.
The dedicated word processor is not just an old home appliance.
It is a memory of an era that tried to take on the complexity of the Japanese language within a machine.
Ichitaro turned the PC-9801 into a machine for Japanese documents.
Hanako gave Japanese documents lines, boxes, and arrows.
Kasumigaseki-style conceptual drawings were an administrative art form that turned Japanese into diagrams with diluted responsibility.
And now, in the age of AI, that question has returned once again.
Are we making machines write our text? Are we making machines polish our text? Are we making machines create diagrams that dilute responsibility? Or, while borrowing the help of machines, will we continue to choose our own words?
And one more question remains.
Machines were originally born to calculate. They were born to input numbers, change conditions, and simulate the future.
Lotus 1-2-3 was a spreadsheet software that brought the future onto our desks. Change the sales. Change the interest rates. Change the exchange rates. Change the costs. Then, the fate of the company changes within the cells.
However, in Japan, that revolutionary tool gradually turned into a machine for reproducing paper forms.
Merge cells. Draw borders. Color input fields yellow. Adjust the print area. Write the form number in the top right. And then, the essential formulas disappear.
Spreadsheet software was supposed to be a tool for calculating the future.
However, in Japan, it became graph paper used to preserve past formatting.
Next time: Excel graph paper.
We will explore Lotus 1-2-3, Excel, cell merging, borders, print areas, municipal forms, Kasumigaseki documents, and the Japanese document culture that kills data in the age of AI.
Text by Rintaro Takechi