CREATIVE COMPUTING (November 1978) Japan Journal Kay Kazuhiko Nishi. publisher of ASCII, a Japanese computer hobbyist magazine, acted as my genial host and interpretor during my four days in Japan. ASCII, incidentally is Creative Computing's agent in Japan. In Japan there are four personal computing magazines: I/O, RAM, Malcon, and ASCII. In addition there are ten other electronics and professional computer magazines which touch on the field. The personal computing magazines tend to carry articles on how to design and/or build home-brew boards, TV displays and low-level programming reflecting the fact that most Japanese hobbyists are building home-brew or single board systems. Kay Kazuhiko Nishi, publisher of ASCII Magazine, set up appointments and acted as host, guide, and translator during my four days in Japan. The Japanese computer industry from micros to minis to mainframes tends to be dominated by five huge vertically-integrated manufacturers who make everything from ICs to household appliances. These com- panies are Nippon Electric Co. (NEC), Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi (Melcom), and Fujitsu (Facom). At this point, the big five tend to be following a con- servative policy of copying what has been successful for IBM — maybe The Cosmos Computer Shop is the first second-hand computer equipment shop in Japan. They sell a large variety of I/O de- vices along with several personal com- puters (PET, Apple, etc.) and one manu- factured to their own specifications. trying to do it better — but in general avoiding innovation of entirely new products. In foreign markets they tend to be concentrating on peripherals rather than CPUs. Also, what one does, the others tend to follow. At this point in the personal computing field most of the big five along with Matsushita (Panasonic) and Sharp are marketing a single board, no box, no bus, non- extendable computer (see "Bit-INN Shops . . " in box). One deviant is Hitachi who recently came out with a product called "BASIC Master," a TRS-80 like system. Also Sharp has a PET-like computer planned with an LCD display. On the day I left Tokyo, Fujitsu, perhaps also feeling the need to have a complete system, announced an arrangement whereby they would market the PET in Japan. tremendous amount of positive press coverage. In addition, Commodore operates several PET shops in Japan; "PET" standing for "Personal Elec- tronic Things." At the Shinjuku PET Shop, I saw some fabulous PET pro- grams, several of which will be finding their way into the Creative Computing "Sensational Software" library. Nuf said? _, . I don't mean to imply that the Big 5 dominate the industry to the exclusion of anyone else. Not so. Even in Japan a cottage industry survives, strives, and thrives. (Talk about alliteration, mein gott!) Fujitsu Ltd. (Facom) introduced the 9616 Display Terminal, a 1" thick plasma dis- play terminal which permitted the overlay of a forms transparency on the screen. It is designed mainly for use with their Amdahl systems. Typical Pet Shoppe On a relative scale, Commodore is marketing the PET much more actively in Japan than in the U.S. This is un- doubtedly sparked by the fact that the price (and probably profit margin) is much higher in Japan than the U.S. The PET sells for approximately $1500 in Japan yet over 2,000 have been delivered to date. Commodore actively advertises in the Japanese hobbyist magazines, something which Sid Bernstein (marketing VP of Commo- dore) in his infinite wisdom has not seen fit to do at home despite a -31 President Kamata Isamu and the chief en- gineer of Adtek System Science Co., a typical "cottage" company, produce and market an impressive line of 14 boards for hobbyists as well as the Comkit 8060 and 8061 computer systems. One of those cottage industry com- panies is Adtek System Science. Adtek designed and is marketing one of the first, and certainly lowest priced com- plete BASIC-speaking, keyboard, boxed system in Japan, the Comkit 8060 and 8061. The assembled 8061 using a Nat'l Semi SC/MP(!) has been on the market since July 1978 and is currently selling a modest 100 units per month. With a 4k ROM for Basic and 8k of RAM, the unit sells for $600 assembled. Adtek founder and president, Kamata Isamu was formerly a designer and evaluator in the LSI manufacturing arm of NEC but was bitten by the "own-your-own-business bug." His conservative and profitable marketing strategy does not include plans to go outside Japan. Another successful smaller com- pany is Mac8 (or McEight — they spell it both ways) which was formed in July 1977. Their first product was an Altair- like computer kit called EMIC. The second generation EMIC has an in- genious method of connecting peri- pherals together side by side. The boxes are narrow (2" to 4") and two connectors in the base connect the bus from one unit to the next. In the Mac8 factory, workers assemble components for the EMIC computer. In addition to the EMIC system, Mac8 also produces a high-quality in- dustrial system with 32k and dual floppies called the MACRO/80; price $6500. A third product is their "In- telligent PAL" with CRT, floppy and keyboard built in to a single box. It has amazing graphics resolution (1200 horiz. points!). With 32k, the price is $3000. Interestingly, Mac8's floppy based systems will use CP/M and Micro As- sembler from Digital Research and Basic and Fortran from Microsoft.