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List of Japanese inventions and discoveries

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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This is a list of Japanese inventions and discoveries. The Japanese have made contributions across a number of scientific, technological and art domains. In particular, the country has played a crucial role in the digital revolution since the 20th century, with many modern revolutionary and widespread technologies in fields such as electronics and robotics introduced by Japanese inventors and entrepreneurs.

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Arts

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Origami paper cranes (orizuru)
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A kamishibaiya (kamishibai artist) in Tokyo, performing Ōgon Bat (1930).

Animation

Katsudō Shashin (1907), the earliest anime.

Architecture

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Nagoya Castle

Cinema

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Seven Samurai (1954), directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Comics

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Hokusai Manga, published in the early 19th century, was an early manga comic book.

Literature

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Kaguya-hime returning to the Moon in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (10th century)
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Audio

Audio technology

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Sony Discman D121

Instruments

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Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer (1980), the first fully programmable drum machine and one of the most influential inventions in popular music.

Music

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Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) in 1981: Haruomi Hosono (left), Ryuichi Sakamoto (center) and Yukihiro Takahashi (right).
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Computing

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Intel 8259A chip from a PC XT. A version of the Intel 8259 (1976), the first programmable interrupt controller (PIC) designed by Masatoshi Shima.

Artificial intelligence

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Sega AI Computer (1986), the earliest home computer specialized for artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP).

Calculators

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Casio electronic pocket calculator with a seven-segment liquid-crystal display (LCD) that can perform arithmetic operations

Computers

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Epson HX-20, introduced in 1981, was the first laptop.

Memory and storage

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Toshiba SD card, a type of flash memory card.

Microprocessors

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Intel 4004 (1971), the first singlechip microprocessor, was codesigned by Masatoshi Shima of Busicom.
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Culture

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Kawaii items, from left to right, top to bottom: shelf of decorated tea kettles; food served at a maid café; Hello Kitty on a sign in Ikebukuro, Tokyo; mobile phone charm attached to a pink Palm

Food and drink

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Instant noodles before boiling

Martial arts

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All-Japan Judo Championships, 2007 men's final

Philosophy

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Tajōmaru and the samurai's wife, two unreliable narrators in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), which the Rashomon effect is named after.
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Display technology

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Sony home cinema setup, with full HD LCD television, digital TV set-top box, DVD player, PlayStation 3 video game console, and loudspeakers.

Cameras

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Minolta RD-175, a portable digital SLR (DLSR) camera released in 1995.

Computer graphics

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2.5D parallax scrolling of city buildings

High definition

Television

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A recreation of Kenjiro Takayanagi's pioneering television experiment (1926), on display at the NHK Broadcasting Museum in Atagoyama, Tokyo.
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Sony XEL-1, the world's first OLED TV.

Timekeeping

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2A Seiko quartz wristwatch using the chronograph function (movement 7T92)

Video

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Sony's U-matic, the first videocassette format, introduced in 1971.
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Betamax (top) and VHS (bottom) tapes were respectively created by Japanese companies Sony and JVC.
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Games

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A modern pachinko machine
  • Modelguns — Japan's Model Gun Collection, founded in 1959, was the first manufacturer of modelguns, which they debuted in 1962.[470]
  • Model robot
  • Pachinko — Pachinko machines were first built during the 1920s as a children's toy called the Corinth game.[471]

Board games

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Renju is played on a 15×15 grid Go board.

Electro-mechanical

A child playing with a classic Japanese Mogura Taiji (WhacAMole) machine.

Game audio

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Playing Dance Dance Revolution, one of the most successful rhythm games.

Game consoles

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Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

Game controllers

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Nintendo 64 controller, debuted in 1995 and released in 1996, popularized analog thumbstick controls.
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Donkey Kong (1982), showing its revolutionary D-pad design.
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Controller of the PlayStation 2, the best-selling video game console of all time.

Sports

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Airsoft players defending an objective.
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Nissan Silvia (S14) performing a drift (2014)

Video games

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Space Invaders (1978), an early arcade shoot 'em up.
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Kung-Fu Master (1984), an early side-scrolling arcade beat 'em up.
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Street Fighter II (1991), an arcade fighting game.
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Fonz arcade cabinet (1976)
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Sciences

Atmospheric science

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A downburst.

Chemistry and biomedical

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Image from Kishitsu Geryō Zukan ("Surgical Casebook") by Hanaoka Seishu
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Chemical structure of methamphetamine

Equipment

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Miniature USB microscope, a type of digital microscope.

Finance

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Scheme of a single candlestick chart.

Mathematics

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A page from Seki Kōwa's Katsuyo Sampo (1712), tabulating binomial coefficients and Bernoulli numbers.

Nanotechnology

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A "sliced and unrolled" representation of a carbon nanotube as a strip of a graphene molecule.

Physics

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445–450 nm blue laser (middle)

Solar power

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Semiconductors

Diodes

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Blue LEDs

Integrated circuits

Transistors

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A double-gate FinFET transistor device
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Telecommunication

Internet

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A thread on 4chan, a popular English language imageboard inspired by Japanese imageboard 2chan.

Mobile phones

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J-SH04, released by Sharp Corporation and J-Phone in 2000, was an early camera phone capable of picture messaging.
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Each of the most popular emoji from the 9 major emoji categories according to the Unicode Emoji Frequency study from 2021, rendered in the Noto Color Emoji font

Wireless

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A modern high-gain UHF Yagi television antenna.
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Transportation

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A lineup of JR East Shinkansen bullet trains in October 2012

Automobiles

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Nissan Altra EV (1997), the first battery electric vehicle (BEV) using lithium-ion batteries.

Automotive electronics

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The driver monitoring system (DMS) on Toyota's Lexus LS 600h (2006)

Military

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The Wakamiya conducted the world's first naval-launched air raids in 1914.

Motorcycles

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Honda CB750 (1969), the first superbike.
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A Japanese taxi equipped with GPS navigation (2004).
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Other technology

Summarize
Perspective
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A lithium-ion battery pack for a laptop computer.
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QR code for the URL of the English Wikipedia mobile main page

Chindōgu

Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever. Thus, Chindōgu are sometimes described as "unuseless" – that is, they cannot be regarded as 'useless' in an absolute sense, since they do actually solve a problem; however, in practical terms, they cannot positively be called "useful". The term "Chindōgu" was coined by Kenji Kawakami.

Domestic appliances

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Electric rice cooker

Printing

Timelapse of a 3D printer in action

Robotics

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DER-01, a Japanese actroid (an android intended to be very visually similar to humans)

Textiles

Weapons

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Katana

Writing

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Model B in Pink
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See also

References

Bibliography

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