Jun Murai is the Father of the Internet in Japan
Jun Murai is the Father of the Internet in Japan
Rhiannon Thomas
Modern Tokyo Times
In 1984, the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corp. announced that they were going to deregulate Japan’s telephone network, allowing for the possibility of internet in the country. Leading Japanese computer scientists got together and talked about the creation of a national network. They talked, and they talked. Meanwhile, a junior researcher at Keio University developed his own program that allowed computers at various universities in Tokyo to transfer email and research information between them. While the committee sat and discussed the basics of Japan’s internet was born.
Jun Murai is considered to be “the father of Japan’s Internet.” Born in Tokyo in 1955, Murai is a professor of Environmental Information at Keio University and the founder of JUNET, the Japan University Network. Initially connecting a few machines in Tokyo University, the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Keio University in October 1984, at a time when nongovernmental use of the telephone network was still strictly prohibited, JUNET grew to include over 700 machines at its peak. Funded through Murai’s own research budget, JUNET never officially existed, but it laid the groundwork for the internet to grow.
JUNET was made obsolete in October 1994, when Murai founded a new Japanese Internet Research Consortium known as the WIDE project. Not satisfied with connecting local universities to share research, Murai used the WIDE project to create the first Internet Protocol (IP) in the Asia-Pacific Region, which was instrumental in the launch of Japan’s first Internet Service Provider (ISP).Recognizing the many users in Japan could not use the internet in its current, English-only form, Murai also developed standard Japanese character coding, so that interfaces could work in the Japanese language as well.
Jun Murai is still a leading researcher and Vice-President of Keio University, and his quiet contribution to Japanese society is visible every day. After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March 2011, for example, Murai noted that 3G data connectivity remained active, even though most phone lines were down, providing people with a means of confirming the safety of their families and accessing updates on the situation. “I have received many emails,” Murai wrote on his blog, soon after the crisis, “saying ‘thanks for the internet.”
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