Japan’s government finally says goodbye to floppy disks

It took until 2024, but Japan has finally said goodbye to floppy disks.

Until last month, citizens still had to submit their documents to the government on outdated storage devices, despite more than 1,000 regulations requiring their use.

But these rules have now been finally abolished, said Digital Minister Taro Kono.

In 2021, Mr. Kono declared “war” on floppy disks. On Wednesday, almost three years later, he announced: “We have won the war against floppy disks!”

Since his appointment, Mr Kano has made it a goal to eliminate old technologies, having previously said he would “get rid of the fax machine”.

Japan was once considered a technology superpower, but in recent years it has lagged behind the global wave of digital transformation due to deep resistance to change.

For example, fax machines are still preferred over email machines in the workplace – previous plans to remove these machines from government offices were scrapped due to opposition.

The announcement sparked widespread discussion on Japanese social media, with one user on X (formerly known as Twitter) calling floppy disks a “symbol of an anachronistic government.”

“The government still uses floppy disks? That’s so outdated… I guess they’re just full of old people,” read another comment on X.

Other comments were more nostalgic. “I wonder if floppy disks will start showing up on auction sites soon,” wrote one user.

Developed in the 1960s, square devices fell out of fashion in the 1990s when more efficient storage solutions were invented.

The highest density floppy disks could only store 1.44 MB of data. To copy a Memory Stick with 32 GB of data, over 22,000 such floppy disks would be required.

Sony, the last manufacturer of these disks, stopped production in 2011.

As part of its belated campaign to digitize its bureaucracy, Japan launched a digital agency in September 2021, headed by Mr Kono.

But Japan’s efforts to digitize may be easier said than done.

Despite government efforts to gradually phase out the practice, many Japanese companies still require official documents to be authenticated with a personal stamp called a hanko.

People are turning away from these stamps at a “snail’s pace,” reported the local newspaper “The Japan Times.”

And it wasn’t until 2019 that the country’s last pager provider stopped its service. The last private subscriber said it was the preferred method of communication for his elderly mother.