In Japan, people love paper.

Even in 2016, when I first moved to Tokyo to work at the headquarters of a Japanese company, the addiction to processed sheets of pulped wood felt quaint to me.

This country is renowned for the Shinkansen, possibly the world's best high-speed rail network that snakes through the Japanese archipelago. It's also home to many high-tech manufacturing firms — companies that gave the world Toyota, Sony, Nikon, and Nintendo — amongst others.

Yet, for some particular reason, when it came to the ancient technology of paper, the Japanese just weren't about to give it up.

Print it all out

At my first job in Japan (and no, it wasn't teaching English), people were not just fond of paper — they were addicted to it. During the first meeting, my colleagues started by handing out stacks of paper — material for the meeting.

I stared at the thick wad of A3 paper. The documents had unmistakably been created on Microsoft Excel. Tiny charts and even tinier Japanese script were impossibly squeezed into a tiny area — not unlike the tiny Tokyo apartments that I've come to live in for almost a decade. I had to squint to read the text.

"Do you not use PowerPoint for meeting documents," I asked, shocked at what I was seeing in front of me.

"Oh, we create our meeting and proposal documents in Excel and print them out on A3 paper. Each presenter uses one to two sheets. That's why there are so many sheets."

"I see," I muttered. I was truly in Japan.

After the meeting, my colleagues started throwing the papers into the bin.

I did the same.

For the next two years, I followed this practice like a good Japanese salaryman, even if I questioned the practice.

"Well, the old folks prefer it this way, said my leader." The discussion was closed.

It was only two years later when we got a new department chief that we switched to sharing the documents on iPads rather than printing them out and throwing them away. It's not easy to move away from a technology that's as old as paper.

This was progress.

The ancient roots of Japan's love affair with paper

Papermaking technology is thought to have made its way to Japan from the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo in the 7th century CE. we can be certain that people living in the Japanese archipelago were already familiar with the medium.

But paper — like any other technology — is not free of culture.

Paper was used to write, and having no script of its own, the Japanese wrote in Chinese characters — sometimes in Classical Chinese, and sometimes to render Japanese sounds, leading to what would eventually become a complex orthography.

To this day, Japan still uses the thousands of glyphs that have put off many a would-be-student of Japanese — alongside two phonetic kana alphabets — hiragana and katakana — themselves derived from the ideograph.

A slew of accouterments also accompanied the spread of paper as a medium of communication. For instance, the ink and brush. In Japanese today, to compliment someone on their writing ability, one still says 筆力がいい (hitsuryoku ga ii" — literally, "your brush power is good.")

Hanko and paper are a marriage made in heaven

There were also implements that came together with the ink and brush. The symbol of officialdom — the seal — was also brought over. And since it was associated with status and authority, it's understandable why the nobility took to them like swans to water.

In the beginning, only aristocrats were allowed to use them. Then samurai started using them. After the Meiji Restoration when regular folks started having family names, they spread to all levels of society.

Today, ordinary people and businesses have them — they're called "hanko" or "insho," and there are different types for different purposes — for bank transactions, or even something as simple as signing documents. More commonly, people refer to them as inkan, but strictly speaking, inkan is the seal impression that's left behind by the seal — the hanko.

Happily, I was not exempt from my hanko as well.

When I first arrived at my office, the HR person promptly presented me with 3 seals — one, the hanko for registration at the bank (銀行印, ginkōin), and the correction hanko (訂正印, teisein), for correcting wrongly stamped seals, and a "Shachihata-type" pre-inked stamp — mainly used for acknowledging receipt of day-to-day documents.

I was to later learn more about more types of seals including the most official personal seal called the jitusin (実印), used when purchasing cars and real estate.

You can imagine how the insistence on hanko paperwork became a major obstacle during the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses went remote. Many companies started implementing digital hanko or PDF signatures. Thank goodness, or I would have had to go to the office just to stamp off on marketing material.

The Japanese government has led the attack on hanko. In 2000, the government announced that the mitomein would be eliminated from government procedures that had required them. Out of 14992 procedures that currently required seals, the number would be eventually culled to 83 — a massive reduction of over 99%.

For instance, when I registered my marriage in 2022, there was no need to stamp any seal on the registration documents.

Even the use of the ginkōin is on the way out. Internet banks do not even require customers to register one. Still, the use of the jitusin will likely continue. I've even registered mine, in case I decide to buy property in Japan.

I Yen for cold hard cash

Many tourists to Japan are shocked at how much cash changes hands in Japan. Head to a hole-in-the-wall izakaya and chances are, they'll probably tell you "cash only."

Every week, I make it a point to top up my wallet with a couple of 10,000-yen banknotes — it's a necessity in cash-loving Japan.

Yet even this is slowly changing.

Just before the 2020-postponed-to-2021-Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese government started to heavily promote digital payments. The numbers today are encouraging. From 2017 to 2023, the ratio of cashless transactions increased from 21.3% to 39.3%.

No doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of cashless transactions as people preferred to avoid handling germ-laden banknotes and coins. Still, a doubling in just six years in cash-loving Japan? That's very promising.

In particular, cashless payments have become extremely popular, catching on as more have switched to PayPay, a very popular QR-code-based mobile payment system. It is easy enough for merchants to adopt. There are no complicated machines required. As long as merchants can display a QR code which can even be printed onto a piece of paper, they can receive payments.

And then there are the competitor offerings: MeriPay, by Mercari. LinePay, by Line. There's even Amazon Pay, which I'm ashamed to say I have no experience with.

You can pay with IC-embedded subway cards. There's been such an explosion of cashless payment options at convenience stores today that it's bewildering.

Speaking of subway cards, digital payment systems are getting so advanced that one does not even need the IC card anymore when riding the metro — you can download an app that makes your mobile phone double up as one.

But I've failed to convert to this method of paying for the subway fare. I can see the allure of staying old-school. What if your mobile phone runs out of battery? It's happened to me more than once when riding the train home after a long day at work. I've never felt the need to switch to mobile payment for riding the subway. Old school is fine.

Every two weeks or so, I charge my metro IC card — "PASMO" with cold-hard cash, secure in the knowledge that I wouldn't need an iPhone or wear an Apple Watch just to ride the metro in Tokyo.

The other day, I went to the ATM to top up my wallet with new cash. The machine spit out spanking new notes that showed off the new design.

Ah yes. The smell of paper money.

I love cash.

I must be turning Japanese.

The security of old-school

Just a few weeks ago, I tried to sign up for a stock-trading account with one of Japan's largest securities firms via the online method. I uploaded my health insurance card together with my residence card.

"Ok, this is pretty modern," I thought to myself.

Unfortunately, the names didn't match, because it is shortened on the health insurance card, and also rendered in katakana rather than in English, using the English alphabet. I knew it wouldn't be so easy for foreigners like me.

Fortunately, I had the sense to register the katakana name as my alias with the local government office, so I could produce documents to prove my identity. Still, I had to make a trip to the branch office to show the documents and physically create the account.

"Please bring all the required documents to prove your identity," the customer officer said to me over the telephone.

"Do I need anything else?"

"No, that will be all."

Somehow, I didn't believe him. I put all the documents in my bag together with my hanko set — just in case.

When I arrived at the branch, the customer officer greeted me.

"Sorry to trouble you to make you come here despite the weather. Please input your information into the computer."

I unenthusiastically typed in all the details. It was repeating everything I had already registered before. After completing the data entry, I hit the "send" button.

The data vanished.

"Oh dear," started the customer officer. It seems like the data has vanished. Would it be possible for you to fill out your information on this paper form instead? The data wouldn't just vanish like that."

"Well, I guess this is more secure…"

I looked through the document and noticed that the document required an inkan impression.

"It appears I need to stamp here."

"Oh yes," stated the officer. "Do you have it with you?"

"Would mitomein work for this?"

"Yes, mitomein is fine. Thank you."

I smiled as I pulled out my hanko from my bag.

©Alvin T. 2024

Interested in Japan, Japanese culture, or the Japanese language? Follow me! I write frequently about Japan-related topics on Japonica, where I am also an editor. Discover my most-read stories here.