When Tokyo last hosted the Olympics, in 1964, the unveiling of a bullet train capable of the improbable speed of 210 kph heralded the dawn of a high-tech era in Japan.
Within a decade and a half, innovations such as Sony Corp.’s VCR, Toshiba Corp. flash memory and Space Invaders, the arcade shoot-em up that revolutionized the gaming industry, made Japan synonymous with global technological superiority, and the talk was of it overtaking the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy.
Today, that seems like another age.
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