• Digital Minister Taro Kono declared that the rules requiring the use of floppy disks have been scrapped.
• Kono’s goal is to eliminate old technology, including fax machines.
• Despite being a tech powerhouse, Japan has lagged in global digital transformation due to resistance to change.

Until last month, people were still required to submit documents to the government using floppy disks, despite their outdated status, due to more than 1,000 regulations mandating their use. However, as of 2024, Japan has finally bid farewell to floppy disks.

Digital Minister Taro Kono has announced that the rules requiring the use of floppy disks have finally been scrapped. In 2021, Mr. Kono had “declared war” on floppy disks. Almost three years later, on Wednesday, he declared, “We have won the war on floppy disks!”

Since his appointment to the job, Mr. Kono has made it his goal to eliminate old technology. He had previously stated his intention to “get rid of the fax machine”. Despite once being seen as a tech powerhouse, Japan has in recent years lagged in the global wave of digital transformation due to a deep resistance to change.

For instance, workplaces have continued to prefer fax machines over emails, and earlier plans to remove these machines from government offices were scrapped due to pushback. The announcement sparked widespread discussion on Japanese social media, with one user on X (formerly known as Twitter) calling floppy disks a “symbol of an anachronistic administration”.

“The government still uses floppy disks? That’s so outdated… I guess they’re just full of old people,” read another comment on X.

Others comments were more nostalgic. “I wonder if floppy disks will start appearing on auction sites,” one user wrote.

Invented in the 1960s, square-shaped floppy disks fell out of fashion in the 1990s as more efficient storage solutions emerged. A three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk could store just 1.44MB of data. It would take more than 22,000 such disks to match the storage capacity of a modern memory stick holding 32GB of information.

Sony, the last manufacturer of the disks, ceased production in 2011. As part of its belated campaign to digitize its bureaucracy, Japan launched a Digital Agency in September 2021, led by Mr. Kono.

Local newspapers report that many Japanese businesses still insist on endorsing official documents using carved personal stamps called hanko, despite the government’s efforts to phase them out. The transition away from these stamps is progressing at a “glacial pace,” according to the report.

In 2019, the country’s last pager provider closed its service, with the final private subscriber explaining that it was the preferred method of communication for his elderly mother.