Those were the days
... Computing Japan goes digital
by Wm. Auckerman

It has been five years and four months - 63 issues - since the premiere issue of Computing Japan was published. Since I edited that first issue, and the next 46 that followed, managing editor Daniel Scuka asked if I would contribute a valedictory retrospective for this, the magazine's last paper issue. From next month, Computing Japan's place on bookstore shelves and in subscribers' mailboxes will be taken by LINC Media's new magazine, J@pan Inc., and CJ will move to the Internet.

The Internet
That irresistible force known as the Internet - even though as CJ editor I had a ring-side seat from which to watch its growth, as well as opportunities to interview many of the industry leaders, I still marvel at just how quickly and thoroughly the Internet has changed the face of numerous industries, including the publishing industry. In the early days of the magazine, the Internet was merely an outlying blip on the information technology radar screen. Now, just over five years later, for CJ it is replacing the printing press as the method of production and the bookstore shelf/mailbox as the point of distribution.

In June 1994, when CJ Number 1 was published, public access Internet in Japan was less than eight months old, and still too expensive to attract much public attention. Japan at that time had just 1,285 connected domains, a mere handful of Internet service providers, and a few tens-of-thousands of users. As of September 1 this year, Japan has over 88,000 connected domains, including nearly 69,000 commercial (.co.jp) sites, hundreds of ISPs, and (depending on whose statistics you choose to trust) somewhere between 8 million and 18 million users.

Other changes
When CJ was launched, the buzzword in networking was "client/server." There were still skeptics who doubted that distributed (PC-based) networking could supplant centralized networking (dumb terminals connected to the enterprise's "big iron" mainframe) for business-critical uses. Only the most radical of networking visionaries dared to dream of IP-based corporate intranets and extranets.

On the consumer side, Japan in 1994 was still emerging from the fragmented home PC market of the late '80s and early '90s. During that period, NEC dominated the Japanese PC market with its proprietary PC9800 models, while the also-rans - makers like Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Toshiba - were each pushing their own proprietary architectures (DOS-based machines, but incompatible with each other and with US-standard IBM AT-compatibles). Software designed for a Fujitsu PC, for example, wouldn't run on a Hitachi PC; so to maximize their sales, software makers had to spend time and money to develop four or more different versions of each program. It was IBM's introduction and refinement of DOS/V in the early 1990s, followed by the release of Japanese Windows 3.1 in 1993 and Windows 95 in November 1995, that changed the Japanese computing landscape. DOS/V and Windows spurred the convergence and growth of the non-NEC side of the Japanese PC market - and, not incidentally, opened the door for foreign manufacturers like Dell, Compaq, and Gateway 2000.

CJ's content
Telecommunications (both market deregulation and new technologies), software localization, software piracy, mobile computing, databases, earthquake protection, the IT job market - CJ has covered the whole gamut of computing in Japan. There's no room here to discuss the top stories or most significant trends and events; for a good overview of how things changed, I recommend John Boyd's "year in review" articles (in every January issue of the magazine). Aside from the feature articles, the most popular parts of the magazine have been the current news sections: Industry News, Newsbriefs, the Events Calendar, and "What the Japanese Are Reading." And the articles that drew the most "more please" reader mail were the "how to" features: how to read/write Japanese in English documents, how to install Japanese and English Windows side-by-side, how to configure English Windows to recognize a Japanese keyboard, and how to display Japanese Web pages in an English browser (no - things weren't always so easy as they are today).

Trails and tribulations
And it wasn't always easy getting the magazine out on time every month, either. At the start, we were hopelessly naive - high on hopes, low on experience. Leaving the task of finding/creating good content and putting it together into an attractive package aside, one of the toughest tasks proved to be signing ads for the magazine. Until we had about a year's worth of issues under our belt, the CJ salespeople often heard a variation of the comment, "You're just a startup publication; how do we know you'll still be around in six months? We're not going to sign up for a cruise on what may be a sinking ship." (A valid anxiety, since more than half of all new magazines go belly up during their first year.)

Being published, until late 1996, by a yugen gaisha (LINC Japan) rather than a more prestigious kabushiki gaisha (as LINC Media is today - Ed.) didn't help either. In those BI (Before Internet) days, you were a corporate nobody if you weren't a KK. Then there was the problem of being an English-language magazine in Japan. Many prospective Japanese advertisers didn't feel the foreign community was big enough to be concerned about. Or, as the advertising manager of a large computer firm told one CJ salesperson bluntly, "We'll never advertise in your magazine. I don't want your readers to call us. They speak English; they're just a nuisance."

We compounded the difficulty by insisting on remaining independent and doing our own ad sales, rather than kow-towing to one of the big ad agencies and letting them dictate what we could and couldn't publish so as to keep their clients happy. Our "go it alone" sales effort clearly marked us as "foreigners who don't understand the Japanese system," and earned CJ not a few enemies in Japanese advertising circles. But we persevered and, thanks mainly to Terrie's unwillingness to throw in the towel, survived. Not that there wasn't occasionally some doubt. I recall at least three occasions in the first couple of years - during months when expenses far exceeded income - that Terrie declared, "This issue will be CJ's last." (After all, his pockets were covering the shortfalls.) But his heart just wouldn't commit to surrender, and each time I was able to convince him (at least, I like to think it was my persuasive powers that tipped the scale) to "hang on just a little bit longer. I think things will turn around next month."

A great group of people
Whatever the tribulations, working on CJ was sometimes fun, often exhilarating, and always rewarding. We never had a big staff compared to other magazines of similar size and quality, so I used to feel a sense of real pride in the whole CJ crew whenever someone would look over the masthead and remark to me, "For such a small group of people, you guys really put out a great magazine." It would have been conceited of me to reply, as I always had the urge to do, "Actually, several of those people only work on the magazine part time."

I'd like to take this opportunity to say to all the people who worked with me on CJ over the years (freelancers as well as staff): Thanks everyone; it was your efforts that kept the magazine going and made it a success. And, incidentally, I've never worked with a greater bunch of people.

The true history of CJ is not a chronicle of late nights, missed deadlines, printing mistakes, negative cash-flows, and recalcitrant advertisers. Those are simply the backdrop for a human story - the story of a group of people who tried their best to do something creative, informative, entertaining, and new. And who, in the process, made a lot of close friends, had some fun, and were successful in those things that really matter.

As Computing Japan's founding editor-in-chief, Bill guided the magazine through its first four years, from the June 1994 issue through the June 1998 issue. Today, he's juggling roles as communication specialist with a global management consulting firm, writer for the United Nations University, and freelance editor/writer. Contact him at auck@gol.com.

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