Japan finally phases out floppy disks
Japan this week abolished all regulations that required the use of floppy disks for administrative purposes, bringing Japan right up to date 13 years after Japanese manufacturers produced their last units.
The floppy disk, invented in the 1970s, was once a ubiquitous component of computers. Other forms of memory, such as flash drives and internet cloud storage, have since taken over. In the 1990s, along with the cassette tape, it slowly fell into the dustbin of obsolete technology.
But not in Japan. While the country is known for its consumer electronics giants, robots and some of the world’s fastest broadband networks, it is also wedded to floppy disks and other old technologies like fax machines and cash.
Japan only began moving away from 1900s-era plastic magnetic disk storage devices two years ago, when Taro Kono, the country’s digital affairs minister, declared a “war on floppy disks.”
When he saw an image of a billboard along the highway for an American cancer clinic that read, “If you know what a floppy disk is, maybe it’s time for your cancer screening,” Mr. Kono said responded on social media: “No, not necessarily in Japan.”
In the southern city of Tsuwano, accounting department officials did not replace the stack of floppy disks until April 2023, said Nobuyuki Koto, one of the officials.
It took some time to set up the city’s new database, but the transition was inevitable and the new system is faster and more accurate, he said.
A wide spectrum of companies – mines, oil companies, retailers, liquor stores, shopping malls – were bound by various regulations requiring them to submit documents to regulators on floppy disks.
Even after Sony, once a major manufacturer of floppy disks for the Japanese market, stopped producing them in 2011, more than 1,000 laws, regulations and guidelines mandating the use of floppy disks remained in place, according to the Ministry of Digital Affairs.
On Wednesday, Mr. Kono declared victory in his war. All of those regulations have been reviewed by lawmakers, subjected to public comment, voted on and knocked downhe said.
The last rule related to the recycling of used vehicles and was repealed on June 28, he said.
Outside of government, some Japanese sectors are not yet ready to let go.
Most of the traditional textile industry in a part of Kyoto that makes items including kimonos has not improved its technology since the introduction of floppy disks in the 1980s, said Motoshi Honda, an analyst at the Kyoto Municipal Industrial Technology Research Institute.
Higo Bank, a regional financial institution on Kyushu Island, processes nearly 300 floppy disks a day, weighing nearly 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms), according to Yusuke Murayama, a bank spokesman.
The bank has been trying to convince customers who still use the disks to store their bank account information to change formats, saying the bank would no longer accept the disks starting in the spring.
Floppy disks still exist outside Japan. The embroidery and aerospace industries use them, and until recently, the U.S. nuclear arsenal did too.
Within the government, Mr. Kono’s work is not yet done. He has indicated that fax machines, which are still widely used in Japan, are in his sights. He advised switching to e-mail.
In Tsuwano, whose accounting department last year switched from floppy disks, the office fax machine is often still the fastest way to send information, said Mr. Koto, the city official. Officials fax the names of the dead to newspaper obituaries and use the machines to correspond with local businesses.
“Sometimes people don’t notice emails,” Mr. Koto said.
But even after he finally got rid of the floppy disks, he still missed some things from the old system.
“There was no risk of being hacked,” he said. “Now we have to be careful about data security.”
