Records management in Japan

Japan is one of the great industrialized countries. It is a true economic superpower, has produced some of the most sophisticated information technology, and has literally hundreds of huge business corporations that are as competitive and successful as any in the world.

But what of records management? Do these huge business enterprises have records management? If so, how widespread is records management as an accepted business practice? What are the similarities and differences between records management in Japan as compared with practices here in North America? And what about records management in the Japanese government? We will examine each of these issues in this column.

THE LAND OF NIPPON Japan is a nation of approximately 124 million persons--just under half the size of the population of the United States. In geographic size, however, the four main islands that comprise Japan are only slightly smaller than the State of California. Japan is governed under a parliamentary democracy; its constitution is similar in many respects to the U.S. constitution, as the United States occupied Japan at the close of the Second World War and helped re-establish the country and its governmental and other institutions. (This post-World War II assistance has some significance for records management in Japan, as we shall see.) On a regional level, Japan's government is divided into forty-seven "prefectures," and of course the country has hundreds of cities, including Tokyo, the world's largest.

The Japanese culture is breath taking in its artistry and sophistication, but when most people in North America think about Japan, they think business. The Japanese are, arguably, the greatest business people in the world today. Indeed, the World Competitiveness Scoreboard, a rating system which ranks countries on their ability to compete in global markets, rates Japan as number one in the world in business competitiveness. The United States occupies second place.(1)

Japan's economy is a little bigger than half the size of the U.S. economy--$3.76 trillion to $5.95 trillion respectively. This wealth is created by hundreds of world-class companies making thousands of outstanding products used in Japan and the world over. Depending on how global businesses are ranked, Japan is home to somewhere between 26% and 39% of the largest business corporations in the world,(2) including many that are familiar to us here in North America, such as Toyota, Honda, Canon, Sony, Fuji, and dozens of others.

THE HISTORY OF RECORDS MANAGEMENT IN JAPAN

The history of records management in Japan needs to be divided into two main phases: pre-and post-World War II. The early history of records management was recounted by Mr. Munehisa Sakuyama, CRM, in a paper presented at the 32nd Annual Conference of ARMA International in 1987.(3) Sakuyama-san cites some early 19th century examples of records management in Japan. He writes that the Kyo (Tokyo) branch of Mitsui Corporation had a records retention program in the early 19th century. The company classified records into two main categories in its retention schedule: "permanent" and "limited." The limited group was further classified into three retention groups: 12 year, six year, and three year retention periods.(4)

The Mitsui records retention program is particularly significant because no parallel development is known to have existed in the United States during the early 19th century. So far as is known, the first formalized efforts at systematic records destruction in the U.S. occurred in 1889, when the U.S. Congress enacted the General Records Disposal Act.

Later in the 19th century--during the "Meiji Period"--the Meiji government ordered its offices and ministries to submit their records to a "Records Editor." Each office and ministry established its own records office. In 1885, the Records Bureau (the "Kiroku Kyoku") was established in the cabinet of the national government, but this office was dissolved in 1893. However, a smaller Records Section ("Kiroku Ka") remained in existence until 1943, when it too was dissolved--this time in a wartime economy move.(5)

In 1900, the Mitsubishi Corporation established regulations for retaining documents. These regulations were somewhat similar to the Mitsui retention schedule, except that a total of four retention periods or "grades" were established: permanent, ten years, five years and one year.(6)

In 1909, the vertical filing cabinet, an American invention, was first advertised for sale in Japan. This records housing device had been developed in Buffalo, New York, in 1892. The Banking Division of Mitsubishi Zaibatsu was reportedly one of the first companies in Japan to use this type of filing device.(7)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN RECORDS MANAGEMENT

As previously noted, the U.S. military occupied Japan during the post-World War II period and helped re-establish the country and its institutions. Many American business management practices were introduced to Japan for the first time. Among them were filing techniques based on U.S. military filing practices.(8) Also, in the late 1950s, Japanese companies began to import large quantities of office furniture from the United States. The vertical filing system, with its four-drawer cabinets, began to be widely employed as the means of recordkeeping in many businesses.(9)

During the 1960s and '70s, many Japanese business people came to the U.S. to study a wide variety of business management practices and determine whether and how to apply them in their home country. Records management was one such practice. Modern records management in Japan can be considered to have begun during the mid-1970s, when a group of Japanese businessmen made a thorough study of American records management and endeavored to adapt and apply many of our core principles to the special environment of Japanese business. In 1976, this group established the Nippon Records Management Company, Ltd." This firm has been, during the past seventeen years, one of the driving influences on Japanese records management. The company's business originally centered on records management in nuclear power companies, but later expanded to general businesses. Based in Tokyo, it has spawned and otherwise influenced the development of records management throughout Japan.

In commenting on the status of records management in Japan during the late 1970s, Mr. Sadamaro Yamashita, now president of Nippon Records Management Company, made the following observations:

* In Japanese businesses, "the records management concepts were placed in an undervalued position or neglected for many years."

* "Presently, there is no clear responsibility for records retention and retrieval work at most of the Japanese companies."

* "The documents, letters, folders, and other papers in many cases are being filed into individual cabinet drawers by somewhat personalized means due to the lack of...filing manuals of the company and records retention and retrieval processes."(11)

Nine years later, in 1987, another commentator, Mr. Munehisa Sakuyama, who was formerly the records manager at Chiyoda Chemical Engineering and Construction Company, made similar observations: "In Japan, records management is not a recognized management function yet. I know that because:

(1) Many in information management have not heard the term.

(2) There is no qualification system in Japan, like the CRM.

(3) To my knowledge, no colleges or universities teach records management.

(4) Companies do not recruit or retain professionals or specialists for records management."(12)

Finally, in 1992, Mr. Osamu Saito, Managing Director of Tokyo Records Management Company, wrote that "Japanese understanding of the importance of records management...has reached a fair level, but it is not sufficient...Many corporations...do not recognize the necessity of placing a records manager responsible for records management."(13)

What conclusions can be drawn from the foregoing? These observations could just as easily have been made by American commentators assessing the status of records management in the U.S. in 1993! On the other hand, this writer believes that it is fair to conclude that the level of records management practice is not nearly as widespread in Japan as it is in the U.S. It would, I think, also be fair to say that records management, as a distinct and accepted management function, is in an early stage of development in Japan. These conclusions notwithstanding, Japan has some of the best and most sophisticated records management installations in the world. These will be reviewed as we progress.

JAPANESE TERMS FOR RECORDS MANAGEMENT AND LANGUAGE CONSIDERATIONS

If the term "records management" is translated directly into Japanese, the equivalent term is kiroku kanri. "Kiroku" means "record," while "kanri" denotes "management." However, this term is not in common usage, and would not be recognizable to people in business and government. The closest equivalent term is bunsho hanri, which means "document management."

Other features of the Japanese language have a significant influence on the unique character of records management in Japan. Two are particularly noteworthy:

(1) The Japanese language contains some 2,000 Chinese characters. These "Kanji" characters are "hieroglyphic" or symbolic in form, but they are not related to one another in a sequential sense. Thus, filing document folders the contents of which are denoted by Chinese Kanji characters, cannot be accomplished in an "A to Z" sequential manner, as we file our alphabetically sequenced folders, which are denoted by English letters and words.(14)

(2) Because there are 2,000 separate Kanji characters, Japanese computer keyboards have no keys for these characters. Thus, a Kanji character must be entered into the computer by its phonetic translation and displayed on the screen by a "pattern generator." This has several implications for records management: it increases the computer memory burden, it increases the incentive to employ optical disk technology, and it means that a records management program used in America, even if its language is translated, cannot be used in Japan "as is."(15)

FACTORS STIMULATING: AND RETARDING: THE DEVELOPMENT OF RECORDS MANAGEMENT IN JAPAN

If records management is now in its early stage of development in Japan, several factors portend a promising future for it. The major factors "driving" the growth of records management in Japan are:

* The rapid growth of very large quantities of records. Although reliable figures are not available, it seems safe to assume that the situation is similar to what it is here in the United States, where the growth of records has averaged approximately 15% (or triple the growth rate of the nation's economy) over the past thirty years. As an advanced industrial economy, Japan has most of the same records producing systems and machines as we do in the U.S. These records create a significant management problem for the businesses and governments that own them, a problem for which records management has solutions.

* Extremely expensive office space with inadequate space for records storage. The cost of office space in Tokyo and in much of the rest of Japan is the highest in the world. This situation requires office workers to work in very small spaces, with little space for filing. Over-crowded conditions are very common.(16) Again, this creates strong incentives to introduce records management systems and procedures to eliminate all unneeded records from prime space.

* A huge business sector comprised of many profitable companies having strong incentives to achieve maximum efficiencies in order to remain globally competitive. As noted earlier, Japan has the world's most globally competitive economy, with hundreds of very profitable firms having ample resources to invest in better recordkeeping systems. Despite the current recession in Japan (the worst in several decades), this situation is expected to continue.

Notwithstanding these positive preconditions for the future development of records management in Japan, other factors are present which serve to retard the spread of records management. First, there is Japan's lifetime employment system, which Mr. Saito believes to be an impediment to the introduction of records management, particularly among smaller firms. This is because "the old-fashioned way of manual records control poses little problems in companies of moderate scale, where documents are put under the control of individual workers, and joint document control meets strong resistance."(17)

Another factor is the nature of Japan's legal system. In the U.S., business corporations have strong incentives to implement a records management program in order to take advantage of their ability to reduce the risk of litigation and the very large penalties that can sometimes result from adverse findings in legal proceedings. The U.S. is a highly litigious society, one in which lawsuits are often the means of resolving business disputes. This type of legal/business climate creates very favorable conditions for records management in the U.S. But in Japan lawsuits are not nearly so common as the ultimate means of resolving business disputes. Thus, litigation risk avoidance is not a significant factor contributing to the development of records management.

A related factor is the records retention regulatory climate. Unlike the U.S., Japan has relatively few laws and regulations requiring businesses to keep certain records for specified periods of time. Such laws can be quite onerous and burdensome to comply with, but they do engender a favorable climate for records management because they create a records retention problem for businesses. Japan does, however, have a few of these regulations, and for the sake of interest we will share one of them with our readers, this one appearing in the Commercial Code of Japan:

"Every trader shall prepare accounting books and balance sheets for making clear the conditions of business properties and profit and loss...Every trader shall preserve his books of accounts, and all important documents relating to his business for a period of ten years...from the time at which the book has been closed."

RECORDS MANAGEMENT BOOKS

We have already mentioned that records management, which is needed to produce a pool of well trained records management personnel, is taught in few if any colleges and universities in Japan. A related issue is the existence and quality of records management books. A total of six such books are known to exist in Japan. Their titles are:

(1) Graphically Explained Filing (2) Filing for Practical Use (3) A Skillful Way of Filing (4) Filing Systems by Example (5) Filing in Office Automation Period: Automated Records Management System (6) Records Management System

The last book was written by an American, Mr. William Benedon, CRM, and was translated into Japanese and published in 1988. It is valuable in that it serves as a reference source for "American style" records management in Japan. None of the other books, however, describes such core records management concepts as records inventory, vital records protection, forms management or archives management. Filing in Office Automation Period is the only Japanese book that discusses the records series concept and records retention schedules.(18)

THE RECORDS MANAGEMENT VENDOR COMMUNITY IN JAPAN

A strong influence driving the development of records management in Japan is the vendor community. Japan has a number of excellent records management companies, which tend to specialize in either consulting services, inactive records storage, or both. In 1992, there were a total of ten companies in Japan specializing in records management consulting, and a total of six records management departments of office equipment sales companies.(19)

A noteworthy aspect of records management services provided by Japan's vendor community is what we here in the States refer to as "outsourcing": the provision of administrative/management services--in this case records management services--by an outside vendor. The market for these services is in its embryonic stage in the U.S., but it appears to be somewhat more mature in Japan.

RECORDS MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT

The process of introducing records management to agencies and ministries of the Japanese government is reported to be very slow in Japan. At the central (national) level, an Ad-hoc Administrative System Study Council issued a report in 1983 recommending the adoption of standardized records and filing systems in all agencies and ministries of the national government, and the Prime Minister's Office launched a campaign to promote these records management practices. However, progress in implementing these measures is reported to have been slow to date.(20)

The Japanese government follows a "thirty-year rule" as regards transfer of permanently valuable records from agencies and ministries to the National Archives of Japan. The ministries are not required to transfer such records until they reach this age. The departments also do all their own appraisals and make their own decisions as to what to transfer and when.(21)

We noted that Japan's regional government consists of forty-seven prefectures. According to a recent survey, a total of about 75% of these units of government utilize a standardized filing system, either partially in some departments or in all departments. Among some 573 city governments, such a system is used in just over half. Progress has also been reported in the construction of records centers.(23)

MICROGRAPHIC AND OPTICAL DISK TECHNOLOGIES

Together with the Americans, the British and the Germans, the Japanese have long been leaders in micrographic technology. Indeed, Canon, Fuji, Minolta and other Japanese companies are world leaders in the manufacture and distribution of micrographic hardware and software. In Japan, however, the micrographic industry has developed its own unique characteristics. Some of the most important of these are:

(1) The Japanese micrographic industry is somewhat smaller than the U.S. microfilm industry, even in relative terms. In the U.S., the 1992 revenues were reported to be $1.88 billion, with annual growth rates in the four to five percent range--about the same as the growth rate of the U.S. economy as a whole.(23) While current figures are not available, the size of Japan's micrographic market was estimated to be $310 million in 1986, with a 15% annual growth rate, estimated to produce revenues of $700 million by 1990.(24)

(2) Applications are reportedly nearly always archival in nature; "front-end" applications for conversion of active records are said to be much less common in Japan than in the U.S.(25)

(3) The quality of produced microfilm images is markedly higher in Japan than in the United States. In Japan, microfilm personnel must be licensed by the Japan Microphotography Association, the industry's professional association. No such requirements exist in the U.S. Moreover, film inspection procedures in Japan exceed the U.S. practice, and the quality and attention to detail for which the Japanese are world famous is evident in very high image quality.(26) By contrast, microfilm production in the U.S. is often hurriedly and sloppily done, and image quality often suffers.

(4) The cost of microfilm production is substantially higher in Japan than in the U.S.--as much as two or three times what American producers would, or could charge to produce microfilm.(27)

(5) In Japan, there is a greater willingness to experiment with and migrate to optical disk technology.

In 1986, Mr. Shiro Toriumi of Minolta Corporation predicted four major technology trends for the 1990's in Japan's document imaging industry:

(1) The development of microfilm production technology which will combine computer indexing of documents and drawings with instant processing of the film.

(2) The development of a simple operating method for CAR systems to simplify image retrieval and further automate hardware operation.

(3) A reduction in the cost of micrographic systems.

(4) Further integration of micrographic and optical disk technologies into a single, unified system.(28)

Readers will note the similarity to the situation here in the United States. As is the case here, Toriumisan observes that the keys to growth of the electronic imaging industry are cost reduction and the development of standards and open systems.

CONCLUSIONS

Although records management in Japan is, as we have seen, in a relatively early stage of development and is not as widespread as it is in North America, its future would appear to be very bright. In addition to the strengths we have mentioned, Japan now has two professional associations representing records management interests: the Records Management Society of Japan, founded in March, 1989, and the Tokyo Chapter of ARMA International, which was chartered in September, 1989, and currently has ninety-two members. It will be up to these two bodies to make professional records management a reality throughout the length and breadth of the Land of Nippon as the 1990s progress.

REFERENCES

1. "The Global 500." Fortune. July 26, 1993.

2. See "The Business Week Global 1000." Business Week. July 12, 1993; "The Forbes Foreign Rankings." Forbes. July 19, 1993; "The Global 500." Fortune. July 26, 1993.

3. Munehisa Sakuyama. "Progress of Records Management in Japan." In: Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Confererce, ARMA International, Anaheim, CA. Prairie Village, KS: ARMA International. 1987. pp. 469-477.

4. Ibid. p. 469.

5. Ibid. p. 470.

6. Ibid. p. 470.

7. Osamu Saito. "Records Management in Japan Present Situation and Problems." Paper presented at the 37th Annual Conference. ARMA International, Detroit, Michigan. In possession of the author. p. 1.

8. Toshio Aoki and Sadamaro Yamashita. "Development of Records Management in Japan." Records Management Quarterly. April, 1978. p. 58.

9. Saito. Ibid. p. 1.

10. Ibid. p. 2.

11. Aoki and Yamashita. Ibid. pp. 57-58.

12. Sakuyama. Ibid. p. 474.

13. Saito. Ibid. p. 7.

14. Aoki and Yamashita. Ibid. p. 57.

15. Saito. Ibid. p. 9.

16. Aiko and Yamashita, Ibid. p. 57; Anne Morddel. "A Visit to Japan." Records Management Quarterly. July. 1989. p. 44.

17. Saito. Ibid. p. 7.

18. Sakuyama. Ibid. p. 472.

19. Saito. Ibid. p. 3.

20. Saito Ibid. p. 3.

21. Morddel. Ibid. p 40.

2. Saito. Ibid. p. 3.

23. Beverlee Nunnari. "Information and Image Management: The State of the Industry, 1993." In: Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference, ARMA International, Seattle, WA., Prairie Village, KS: ARMA International, 1993. pp. 207-216.

24. Shiro Toriumi. "Current Trends of Japan's Micrographic and Optical Disk Market." IMC Journal. July/August, 1986. pp. 41-45.

25. Joseph Wise. "An American Looks at Micrographic in Japan." IMC Journal. May/June, 1987.

26. Ibid. p. 22.

27. Ibid. p. 22.

28. Toriumi. Ibid. p 24.

Copyright Association of Records Managers Administrators Inc. Apr 1994
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