Sony’s PS Vita: The Last Great Japanese Electronic Device?

Tomorrow sees the European release of one of the most magical devices ever conceived: the Sony PlayStation Vita (‘PS Vita’), the successor to an item – the PlayStation Portable (‘PSP’) – which was in itself something that an historical eye-blink ago would have been perceived as something out of science fiction. And we are not applying the epithet ‘magical’ liberally: while the PSP essentially comprises a handheld PlayStation 2, MP3 player, cinema system and (in the right, slightly offbeat hands) a hardware set capable of running sophisticated office applications, the PS Vita is a portable Playstation 3 vaunting a qHD screen, a sensational rear touchpad, augmented reality capabilities and (optional) 3G connectivity. In summa: there might be nothing that this machine can’t do.

Yet we at Mediolana are, to utilise what seems to be a vaguely fashionable Americanism, conflicted, our excitement about the PS Vita overshadowed by the realisation that it represents something intensely sobering: if not the last great Japanese electronics device, then perhaps the last great pre-Fukushima manifestation of Tokyo-based ingenuity.

As regular readers of this blog will know from our 18th December 2011 post FC Barcelona in Post-Fukushima Tokyo: The Fallout Begins, we at Mediolana share the concerns of many, both in the international community and within Japan, that the response of the Japanese government to the catastrophe of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has been largely inadequate, and that the problems surrounding the multiple meltdowns are far worse than most in officialdom can bear to countenance.

However, a recent article from the Japan Times has forced us to reevaluate our perspective. On 20th February 2012, it was reported that the Deutsche Schule Tokyo Yokohama, a 1904 establishment that serves as an educational hub for German speakers resident in Japan’s largest conurbation, has been forced to seek financial aid from Berlin because, in the wake of the nuclear crisis, enrolments at the institution have collapsed. Many of those whose families left the school did so on advice from the Deutsche Botschaft Tokyo: Germany’s Japanese embassy.

In the content of Sony’s monumental US$2bn losses for Q4 2011 – a shortfall that was mirrored by other Japanese companies, such as Sharp – the recognition by many Germans who remained in Japan after 3rd March 2011 that the attractions of the world’s third largest economy are fading fast post-Fukushima is an ominous sign for the medium-term future of what was for decades Asia’s paradigm nation. It is now even more imperative for the Japanese administration to act – with transparency and fortitude – to decontaminate Japan and guide it through to a post-nuclear future. Otherwise, the price that will be paid is clear: the history books will record 2011 as the year in which modern Japan – which is generally agreed to have its genesis in the 1868 Meiji Restoration – ceased to exist.