A Brief Overview of Some of the Greatest Inventions and Innovations from Japan

*UNFINISHED ARTICLE*
Hello all, this really is a very large undertaking and requires quite a bit of research and reading, writing, editing, etc.  All I try to do here is summarize some of the great modern innovations, and technologies that have come from Japan.  I will edit, rewrite, and add more material when I have time. I just try to offer here some of the more impressive things with a bit of history, there aren't too many online resources that do that. So here is the start of my attempt.  It's better to publish it now, and polish it later, otherwise it'll take months to see the light of day. Lots of stuff from Wikipedia, but I'll make it better with time.
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It is a common, and pervasive misconception that the Northeast Asians had never invented anything, or just improved upon "White" inventions, this view is due mostly to ingrained ignorance, and popular prejudices, and is totally refuted by the facts.  Of course, with most people it is impossible to actually change their opinions regardless of whatever evidence you present to them.  I found this out the hard way when I started posting factually verified information but zealots, and people with ingrained beliefs would not change their minds no matter what.  The good news is that these people and their views don't matter all that much since, there is overwhelming evidence that that case is not true.

The beginning's of the realization of how much East Asians have contributed to science and technology came from studies carried out by Joseph Needham, a British biochemist, historian, and sinologist. Aside from Needham's scientific researches that showed beyond any doubt of how far ahead scientifically and technologically East Asia, and China in particular had been up until around 1500 A.D. we should look at the modern age, that is the 20th century and see what inventions, and technology have been done that have greatly impacted the world.

For whatever reason, Japan has overtaken this field particularly in the field of technology.  For this short list, I am excluding, scientific discoveries which will be addressed in a separate posting.

Before I make this short, and by no means exhaustive list, it is important to define the word "invention" and justify why we use it.  From Wikipedia this definition seems quite adequate:

"An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field."

Now I will separate what is meant by an invention, particularly from what may be called an improvement.
An improvement would be something like a more efficient car, rather than the first car itself. A more powerful and faster CPU, rather than the concept of the CPU itself.  Now, obviously inventions are often based on principles of science that are already discovered but putting it together in a novel way, that is not obvious to others to make a great use.  So that although the principles behind the light bulb were already in existence, Edison, by using them to make something that is not obvious would be credited with a new invention.

Similarly, if the components of a computer, like the transistor, etc., were already there, the person who successfully puts it together would be credited as the inventor. And it would be considered a new invention. With that in mind and without any further ado here is a brief list:

All Electronic Television: Kenjiro Takayanagi

A recreation of Takayanagi's pioneering experiment, on display at the NHK Broadcasting Museum in Atagoyama, Tokyo. Source: 
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Early_TV_experiment_by_Takayanagi.jpg)

Now we've all heard that Philo T Farnsworth invented the first all electronic television, however, most people are not aware that:

He developed a system similar to that of John Logie Baird, using a Nipkow disk to scan the subject and generate electrical signals. But unlike Baird, Takayanagi took the important step of using a cathode ray tube to display the received signal, thereby developing the first "all-electronic" television set. On December 25, 1926, Takayanagi successfully demonstrated his system at Hamamatsu Industrial High School, where he was teaching at the time (the school is now the Faculty of Engineering at Shizuoka University). The first picture he transmitted was of the Japanese katakana character Japanese Katakana I.png made up of 40 scan lines. This was several months before Philo T. Farnsworth demonstrated his first fully electronic system in San Francisco on September 7, 1927, which did not require a Nipkow disk.

Later in life he was involved with broadcasting, the development of colour television, as well as video tape recorders. 

Also, on the topic of TV's one should note LCD televisions:

The first color LCD televisions were developed as handheld televisions in Japan. In 1980, Hattori Seiko's R&D group began development on color LCD pocket televisions. In 1982, Seiko Epson released the first LCD television, the Epson TV Watch, a wristwatch equipped with a small active-matrix LCD television.

Videocassette recorder: Norikazu Sawazaki & many others.

From Wikipedia:

"In 1953, Dr. Norikazu Sawazaki developed a prototype helical scan video tape recorder. 

Ampex introduced the quadruplex videotape professional broadcast standard format with its Ampex VRX-1000 in 1956. It became the world's first commercially successful videotape recorder using two-inch (5.1 cm) wide tape. Due to its high price of US$50,000, the Ampex VRX-1000 could be afforded only by the television networks and the largest individual stations.

In 1959, Toshiba introduced a "new" method of recording known as helical scan, releasing the first commercial helical scan video tape recorder that year. It was first implemented in reel-to-reel videotape recorders (VTRs), and later used with cassette tapes."

Aside from that Japan became the epicentre for the production of VCRs, due to now just their founding of the technology, but the innovations that they put to it along the way.  Furthermore:

"Sony demonstrated a videocassette prototype in October 1969, then set it aside to work out an industry standard by March 1970 with seven fellow manufacturers. The result, the Sony U-matic system, introduced in Tokyo in September 1971, was the world's first commercial videocassette format."

The real success came to these companies: 

"RCA, JVC, AMPEX, Matsushita Electric / Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba. Of these, the big winners in the growth of this industry were Japanese companies Matsushita Electric / Panasonic, JVC, and Sony, which developed more technically advanced machines with more accurate electronic timers and greater tape duration."

Yagi-Uda Antenna: Shintaro Uda & Hidetsugu Yagi

A Yagi–Uda antenna, commonly known as a Yagi antenna, is a directional antenna consisting of multiple parallel elements in a line, usually half-wave dipoles made of metal rods. Yagi–Uda antennas consist of a single driven element connected to the transmitter or receiver with a transmission line, and additional "parasitic elements" which are not connected to the transmitter or receiver: a so-called reflector and one or more directors. It was invented in 1926 by Shintaro Uda of Tohoku Imperial University, Japan, and (with a lesser role played by his colleague) Hidetsugu Yagi.

This antenna was actually used extensively by the Americans, and Germans, and the British during the war. After the war this was used extensively as a TV antenna, and was the most widely used until it started to get superseded by other antennas in the 1960s.

VHS: Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano

"In 1971, JVC engineers Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano put together a team to develop a consumer-based VTR.

In early 1972, the commercial video recording industry in Japan took a financial hit. JVC cut its budgets and restructured its video division, shelving the VHS project. However, despite the lack of funding, Takano and Shiraishi continued to work on the project in secret. By 1973, the two engineers had produced a functional prototype."

The Rollerball Pen:

The first rollerball pen was invented in 1963 by the Japanese company Ohto.

Lithium-Ion Battery: Akira Yosano

There's no dearth of devices that use the Lithium-Ion battery these days from Laptops, to tablets and cell phones, to video game systems, to electronic vehicles to space, and military applications. The battery has a somewhat long history but the crucial point came with Akira Yoshino. Akira Yoshino assembled a prototype cell using carbonaceous material into which lithium ions could be inserted as one electrode, and lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) as the other. This dramatically improved safety. LiCoO2 enabled industrial-scale production and enabled the commercial lithium-ion battery. Therefore he created the first safe, production-viable lithium-ion battery for which he received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with M. Stanley Whittingham and John B. Goodenough.

Fibre-Optic Communication Milestone PIN diode, and the Static Induction Transistor:
Jun-ichi Nishizawa

Jun-ichi Nishizawa, a Japanese scientist at Tohoku University, proposed the use of optical fibers for communications in 1963. Nishizawa invented the PIN diode and the static induction transistor, both of which contributed to the development of optical fiber communications.

The First "true" Laptop Computer: Yukio Yokozawa

"It was invented in July 1980 by Yukio Yokozawa, who worked for Suwa Seikosha, a branch of Japanese company Seiko (now Seiko Epson), receiving a patent for the invention. It was announced in 1981 as the HC-20 in Japan, and was introduced by Epson in North America as the HX-20 in 1981, at the COMDEX computer show in Las Vegas, where it drew significant attention for its portability. It had a mass-market release in July 1982, as the HC-20 in Japan and as the Epson HX-20 in North America. The size of an A4 notebook and weighing 1.6 kg, it was hailed by BusinessWeek magazine as the "fourth revolution in personal computing".

Blue laser: Shuji Nakamura

In 1992 Japanese inventor Shuji Nakamura invented the first efficient blue LED.the inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology. Together with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, he is one of the three recipients of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".

Flash memory: Dr. Fujio Masuoka

(both NOR and NAND types) was invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba c. 1980. Flash memory that's what we use in USB's and Solid State drives, and they are just about everywhere now. Just think of how absolutely vital this technology is to our everyday world in 2020.  I and several others believe that Dr. Masuoka should be considered for the Nobel Prize for his contribution. 

First performance of general anaesthesia: Hanaoka Seishū

On 14 November 1804, Hanaoka Seishū, a Japanese doctor, became the first person to successfully perform surgery using general anaesthesia. From reading about an ancient Chinese surgeon, and an anaesthetic that he developed, Seishu began experimenting and devised his own: tsūsensan which he successfully used during his surgeries. 

"Hanaoka's success in performing this painless operation soon became widely known, and patients began to arrive from all parts of Japan. Hanaoka went on to perform many operations using tsūsensan, including resection of malignant tumors, extraction of bladder stones, and extremity amputations. Before his death in 1835, Hanaoka performed more than 150 operations for breast cancer. He also devised and modified surgical instruments, and trained and educated many students, using his own philosophy for medical management. Hanaoka attracted many students, and his surgical techniques became known as the Hanaoka method."

Android (Robot):



DER 01

From Wikipedia:

Japanese robotics have been leading the field since the 1970s. Waseda University initiated the WABOT project in 1967, and in 1972 completed the WABOT-1, the first android, a full-scale humanoid intelligent robot.^] Its limb control system allowed it to walk with the lower limbs, and to grip and transport objects with hands, using tactile sensors. Its vision system allowed it to measure distances and directions to objects using external receptors, artificial eyes and ears. And its conversation system allowed it to communicate with a person in Japanese, with an artificial mouth.

In 1984, WABOT-2 was revealed, and made a number of improvements. It was capable of playing the organ. Wabot-2 had 10 fingers and two feet, and was able to read a score of music. It was also able to accompany a person. In 1986, Honda began its humanoid research and development program, to create humanoid robots capable of interacting successfully with humans.

Furthermore:

The world's first android, DER 01, was developed by a Japanese research group, The Intelligent Robotics Lab, directed by Hiroshi Ishiguro at Osaka University, and Kokoro Co., Ltd. The Actroid is a humanoid robot with strong visual human-likeness developed by Osaka University and manufactured by Kokoro Company Ltd. (the animatronics division of Sanrio). It was first unveiled at the 2003 International Robot Exposition in Tokyo, Japan. The Actroid woman is a pioneer example of a real machine similar to imagined machines called by the science fiction terms android or gynoid, so far used only for fictional robots. It can mimic such lifelike functions as blinking, speaking, and breathing. The "Repliee" models are interactive robots with the ability to recognise and process speech and respond in kind.Honourable mention: 

Honourable Mention:

Nintendo 

Alright now there's lots of video game related stuff I could talk about from Japan, but I'll just touch on the topic with one thing: Nintendo.

Part of the third generation of gaming console no other platform has been as successful, and influential in the development of video games. To follow were giants Sega, Playstation, and eventually Microsoft's X Box. Video games are played, and enjoyed all over the world, and have influenced world culture immensely. I could talk about this so much, but for now well, I'll try to cut it short. :)

NEEDS MORE INFO:

First commercially available microprocessors, and vectrocardiography....