Latest news with #Kurita
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
10 Japanese Innovations That Shape Our Daily Lives
Asian Pop 'J-pop' is an umbrella term encompassing a range of subgenres blending elements of Western and traditional Japanese music across various decades, but often it refers to the catchy, upbeat music that emerged in Japan in the late 1980s. This music soon made its way to other countries, including Korea, where it proved sonically influential and provided a model for the idol system, which relies on professionally trained groups of all-around entertainers. So while it's K-pop that has more fully broken through on a global scale, J-pop helped pave the way. The country that changed modern culture and design, from A to Z Emojis Reflective of a national interest in both electronics and kawaii, or cuteness, some of the first emojis were the work of the designer Shigetaka Kurita and were released on Japanese cellphones and pagers in 1999. Kurita's set of 176 pixelated icons was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2016, by which point the software standards nonprofit known as the Unicode Consortium had agreed to make emojis recognizable across operating systems and Apple had added a keyboard for them to its mobile devices. Today, billions of emojis are sent daily around the world. Instant Noodles Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin Foods, invented instant noodles — which are flash fried and then dried — in his backyard shed in Ikeda in 1958. (He used a watering can to sprinkle them with chicken soup.) Starting in 1970, when Nissin began operating in California, they became a satisfying, inexpensive staple in the United States and beyond. Nissin maintains plants in countries ranging from Vietnam to Mexico to Hungary, with flavors varying slightly according to local tastes, and now has many competitors. Hence one of Ando's catchphrases: 'Mankind is noodlekind.' Karaoke The first karaoke-style machine, the coin-operated Sparko Box, debuted in Japan in 1967; by the mid-80s, karaoke venues were ubiquitous there and were beginning to change nightlife abroad too. The erstwhile Los Angeles establishment Dimples, which opened in 1982 — with a single stage, as opposed to the private singing rooms that were standard in much of Asia — is thought to have been the first of thousands of American karaoke bars. Canada, Finland and Britain were also enthusiastic adopters. Evidently, Japan's salarymen weren't the only ones willing to set self-consciousness aside for the brief chance to feel like a star. Explore More Read the editor's letter here. Take a closer look at the covers. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Euronews
31-03-2025
- Business
- Euronews
Help us develop non-English/Chinese AI models, Japan asks EU
ADVERTISEMENT Japan is looking to cooperate with the EU on AI in an attempt to develop models that are not based on English and Chinese since these languages dominate generative models, a senior government official has told Euronews. AI development was flagged as an area for Japan-EU cooperation by Motoki Kurita, the deputy director of Japan's Ministry of the Economy Trade and Industry's (METI) IT industries division. 'We think that the models for generative AI are skewed towards English and Chinese language models. So we believe we can work together on non-English and non-Chinese AI and we can share insights with the EU on data and spread that, expanding it to other regions that are non-English and non-Chinese speaking countries,' he told Euronews during a briefing in Tokyo. 'Many AI models currently represented by ChatGPT for example are not based on open algorithms, which means that we may be dependent on a model for which the prompt for which we receive an answer is unknown, so language barriers play a part,' Kurita added. Generative AI models are language neutral in the way they interact with data, but most are developed by English and Chinese language developers, which may instil language-essential bias. Unlike the EU, with its AI Act, Japan currently has no legal framework dedicated to AI but METI and MIC are working on an AI Guideline for Business. 'We are cooperating with the US, looking at each other's guidelines for overlaps, and we'll publicise the results,' Kurita said, adding that AI regulations need to be interoperable because they need to work across borders. He said that it would also be an option 'to spread that initiative to other countries including the EU since we believe there is a lot we can learn from the EU.'
