A little over two years ago, I wrote a post called 5 Japanese Inventions That Impacted My Life the Most.

I chose the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sony Walkman, instant ramen, Shinkansen and digital camera.

They were all things that had affected my life in some way, and I thought of them as Japanese inventions.

Recently, I became curious whether that description was actually accurate.

It turns out the answer depends on what I mean by invention.

The first one isn’t always the whole story

Nintendo’s Famicom was released in Japan in 1983 and later became the Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan.

It had an enormous influence on home gaming and certainly on my childhood.

But Nintendo didn’t invent the home video game console. Those already existed.

What Nintendo created was its own console and, more importantly, helped shape the way millions of people experienced home gaming.

The Sony Walkman presents a similar problem.

Sony didn’t invent cassette tapes, headphones or portable audio. Those technologies already existed.

What Sony did was combine them into something different.

When the Walkman appeared in 1979, music no longer had to stay in the living room or beside a stereo system. You could carry your own music with you.

That was exactly how I experienced it growing up. I listened to music while travelling, cycling or skateboarding.

Sony hadn’t invented all the pieces.

It had found a new way to put them together.

Some inventions are easier to identify

Instant ramen is different.

Momofuku Ando developed Chicken Ramen in Ikeda, Osaka, in 1958. He had spent months experimenting with ways of making noodles that could be stored and then quickly prepared simply by adding hot water.

Here the word invention seems much easier to use.

There was a particular problem, a series of experiments and a new product that emerged from them.

The Shinkansen becomes more complicated again.

Japan didn’t invent railways or fast trains.

When the Tokaido Shinkansen opened between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka in 1964, its achievement was much larger than making an existing train go faster.

Japan developed a railway system specifically designed for sustained high-speed passenger travel. The trains, tracks, signalling and operations worked together as a system.

So what exactly was invented?

The train?

The railway?

Or a new way of travelling by rail?

Then I reached the digital camera

This was the example that made me realize my old title wasn’t quite right.

In my original post, I actually wrote that Japanese companies such as Fujifilm and Sony played a crucial role in developing digital-camera technology.

That remains true.

But the heading 5 Japanese Inventions implied that the digital camera itself was invented in Japan.

It wasn’t.

Kodak engineer Steven Sasson built the first digital-camera prototype in the United States in 1975.

Japan nevertheless played an important role in what happened afterward.

Sony introduced its Mavica electronic still-camera prototype in 1981. Fujifilm later developed the FUJIX DS-1P in 1988, which recorded digital images onto a removable memory card.

Japanese companies subsequently became major players in making digital photography increasingly practical and accessible.

So my original description wasn’t entirely wrong.

It simply wasn’t precise enough.

Invention and innovation aren’t quite the same thing

Looking at all five examples made the distinction clearer to me.

An invention doesn’t necessarily have to be the thing that eventually changes our lives the most.

Sometimes the important step comes afterward.

Someone takes an existing technology and makes it smaller.

Someone combines several existing technologies.

Someone makes something affordable enough for ordinary people.

Someone develops the infrastructure around it.

Someone finds a use for it that wasn’t obvious before.

That is often where innovation enters the story.

The Walkman is a good example. Its significance wasn’t that every component inside it had never existed before. The innovation was what Sony did with those components and the new behavior that resulted.

The same is true of the Shinkansen. Its significance can’t easily be reduced to a single component or inventor. The breakthrough was creating a complete high-speed railway system.

And although the first digital-camera prototype came from Kodak in the United States, that doesn’t make the later Japanese contributions unimportant.

Quite the opposite.

I would change one word

After looking more closely at the five things in my old post, I wouldn’t change the experiences that made me choose them.

Nintendo still takes me back to childhood gaming.

The Walkman still reminds me of carrying music everywhere.

Instant noodles were something my mother taught me to prepare when I was young.

Travelling on the Shinkansen still connects with my lifelong enjoyment of trains.

And cameras eventually became part of how I document the world around me.

What changed is simply my understanding of what I was describing.

If I wrote that old post today, I would probably call it:

5 Japanese Innovations That Impacted My Life the Most.

It is only one word.

But after looking into the history, it seems like the better one.

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Sources

Nintendo — Company History
History of Nintendo’s products, including the 1983 launch of the Family Computer in Japan.
Nintendo: Company History

Sony — Sony History: The Walkman
Sony’s corporate history of the development and introduction of the Walkman.
Sony: The Walkman and Sony’s history

Cup Noodles Museum Osaka Ikeda — Momofuku Ando and Instant Noodles
Nissin’s museum covering Ando’s development of Chicken Ramen in Ikeda in 1958.
Cup Noodles Museum Osaka Ikeda

JR Central — History of the Tokaido Shinkansen
JR Central’s history of the Tokaido Shinkansen and its opening in 1964.
JR Central: Tokaido Shinkansen history

Kodak — History of Photography
Kodak’s history includes Steven Sasson’s development of the first digital-camera prototype in 1975.
Kodak: History of Photography

Sony — Sony History: Digital Imaging
Sony’s corporate history covering the development of the Mavica electronic still camera.
Sony: Digital imaging history

Fujifilm — Preserving and Developing Photography Culture
Fujifilm’s history of its digital-camera development, including the FUJIX DS-1P.
Fujifilm: Photography and digital imaging history