Japan’s digital transformation consultants are busier than ever. Companies across the country are reaching out for help modernizing their systems, with demand rising “year by year, especially in the last five years,” according to Masahiro Goto from the Nomura Research Institute’s digital transformation team.
What’s driving this consulting boom? Japan eliminated floppy disks in July 2024 after scrapping more than 1,000 regulations. But according to CNN and RNZ reporting, when the government tried to eliminate fax machines in 2021, 400 different ministries filed formal objections. Three years later, fax machines remain Japan’s ultimate analog holdout – and companies are finally ready to tackle them.
The Current Challenge
Digital transformation consultants like Goto help companies that are “eager to move forward, but unsure how to go about it.” Many are still using old systems approaching end-of-service life – including fax infrastructure that’s proven remarkably stubborn.
The timeline reveals why fax became the final boss: Pagers died in 2019 when Japan’s last pager company shut down. Floppy disks required a government “war” to eliminate in 2024. But fax machines triggered 400 formal ministry objections – and they’re still humming in offices today.
As Professor Jonathan Coopersmith from Texas A&M University, who wrote about fax machines, told CNN: “The bigger you are, the harder it is to change.” Japan’s current modernization push proves his point.
Why Companies Need Help
Japan’s fax dependency created the perfect storm for today’s consulting boom. Companies outsourced their IT for years, leaving them without in-house skills to modernize. Now they face “a means of survival” pressure as Japan’s population declines and productivity becomes critical.
Even a global pandemic couldn’t break the fax habit. In May 2020, Japan’s health ministry finally created an online portal for hospital reporting – until then, they were faxing handwritten COVID data. The crisis exposed how deeply analog systems were embedded in critical operations.
The Institutional Resistance
What makes fax elimination so challenging for Goto’s clients? It’s not nostalgia – it’s institutional dependency. Japanese companies built entire verification workflows around fax over decades. Those 400 government objections weren’t defending old technology; they were protecting systems that would require complete rebuilding.
For organizations worldwide that still need to send fax from computer occasionally, Japan’s current transformation struggle shows why some technologies prove harder to eliminate than others.
As Daisuke Kawai from the University of Tokyo notes, companies want to “actively adopt digital technologies as a means of survival” as Japan’s population declines. Experts estimate Japan could catch up with Western digital standards in 5-10 years – but fax machines represent the final frontier.
The consulting boom reveals the irony: Japan eliminated storage technology from the 1970s while communication technology from the 1840s still requires professional help to remove. Fax machines remain the analog holdout that’s keeping digital transformation experts in business.