As the flight settles into its landing pattern, you see spread out below one of the world’s most advanced and convenient airfields. Haneda long ago replaced Narita Airport as Tokyo’s main gateway, and visitors immediately fall in love with it because of its user-friendly systems and the fact that it lies within only thirty minutes of downtown. There is no need for passport or customs control because your travel documents have already been scanned on the plane and reviewed electronically during your flight. After deplaning, you are met by luggage-carrying robots programmed to recognize you as the owner of the suitcases; they accompany you to the train or intelligent vehicle terminals you have preselected.
Here is where you truly make first contact with modern Japan. There are no limousine buses and no taxis with drivers from the airport to downtown Tokyo and other destinations. Rather, there are only robot-driven high-speed trains and driverless vehicles to transport each passenger or group of passengers. No one drives in Japan any longer; the vehicles are all smart, as are the roadways and buildings. A passenger simply steps into a vehicle and tells it the desired destination. The vehicle then automatically moves the passenger to the destination via the fastest route at that particular time. Thanks to these innovations, there are virtually no transportation-related accidents and thus no transportation-related injuries or deaths in Japan anymore.
Smart transport is safe, but also inexpensive, because Japan has developed a variety of low-cost wind, photovoltaic, ocean current, and methane hydrate energy sources and energy-storing devices, linking them all together in a country-wide smart electrical distribution grid. This has reduced the cost of electric-power generation to almost nothing, far below the cost of Japan’s former outdated mix of nuclear and fossil-fuel power plants.
As the vehicle quietly enters the outskirts of Tokyo, you are surprised at the height of the buildings. Because of the instability of much of the land of Japan due to the prevalence of earthquakes, Tokyo had always been a relatively low-rise city. Of course, advances in earthquake-resistant construction had enabled the construction of skyscrapers there beginning in the 1970s. But Tokyo did not then go on to develop a skyline like those of New York and Hong Kong. Now that has changed. Always the leader in earthquake-proof building designs, Japan has pushed its metallurgical and structural technology for dealing with earthquakes to even higher levels, so that the risk of earthquake damage to buildings in the Tokyo area is virtually nonexistent. But even more important has been Japan’s development of the carbon-fiber-based UltraRope technology. First introduced by Finnish elevator-maker Kone in 2012, and then further advanced by Japan’s carbon-fiber and heavy equipment makers, this technology has created cables that are one-seventh the weight of conventional steel cables. Before UltraRope was developed, skyscrapers required riders to change elevators once or twice in going to the top of the building. The extra elevators also made the buildings heavy and thereby limited their height because of pressure on the foundations. The UltraRope cables allow elevators to rise more than a kilometer in a single run, making lighter buildings possible. This has led to the construction in Tokyo of a multitude of office and apartment buildings higher than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which was the world’s tallest building in 2015.
Not only has this allowed for more efficient use of space and more comfortable office and living arrangements, it has also resulted in numerous unexpected economic benefits. Greater urban density, as it turns out, fostered a smart city environment that stimulated entrepreneurial activity, which in turn led to more and faster innovation. Of course, other cities around the world have followed Tokyo in building taller structures, but Japan is the global center of advanced structural design and know-how. Its engineering and construction companies are in great demand worldwide, acting as the leaders for most of the world’s major engineering and construction projects.
Upon arrival at the designated hotel, you are greeted in impeccable, unaccented international English by the staff. (This is just a small piece of evidence that Japan has become a fully bilingual country, in which all students must master English as a condition for graduation from high school and for obtaining a job. You also quickly note that many television and Internet broadcasts carry English subtitles, and that many programs are broadcast in English with Japanese subtitles.) You are guided immediately to your room without going through any check-in procedures—those have all been handled electronically from your vehicle while you were en route from the airport.
Indeed, to say everything has been handled electronically may give a false impression. As far as the individual is concerned, it would be more accurate to say that everything is handled verbally. Japanese electronics, telecommunications, and software industries have evolved to the point at which people can simply give verbal commands, statements, or queries to ubiquitous smart devices that perform the necessary and requested operations. People wear watches or other jewelry with embedded electronics and voice-recognition capability. These devices communicate with enormous networks that link vast clouds of databases and hypercomputers. Needless to say, the development of all these capabilities has required the invention of completely new materials, industrial processes, sterile environments, tools, communications technologies, and much more. Of course, Japan is not the only country with such capabilities, but it is where most of them were invented or developed, and where they are the most advanced and the most numerous.
For instance, many visitors come to Japan these days for health reasons. Some have health problems and come for the latest treatments—including stem-cell-based regeneration of severed nerves and malformed limbs—and advanced diagnosis services. Others come to undertake health-related study or to work in Japanese hospitals and institutes. From all perspectives, Japan has become a mecca for people interested in health care, particularly those interested in sustaining their quality of life after age sixty-five. It is easy to understand why. The average life expectation at birth in Japan is now ninety-five, about eight years longer than in any other country. For those who make it to eighty, an age of more than a hundred is virtually certain. Most importantly, the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia has been dramatically reduced, so that most older Japanese are not only alive, but living well.
This is partly due to diet and positive environmental factors such as public hygiene, clean air and clean water, community health programs for elders, and regular exercise. But it is also due to the most advanced medicines and health-care services on earth. Medical tourism has become one of Japan’s leading industries, topping even the aircraft industry in the yen value of its exported services. Today, everyone in the world with serious medical problems seeks to have a Japanese doctor assist with any operations via video linkup, and they typically seek second opinions from Japan’s best and brightest doctors. The Japanese pharmaceutical industry has become the world leader in mass production of the antibacterial agents that have replaced antibiotics in the fight against infectious diseases, as well as a multitude of drugs and treatments for dealing with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other illnesses of old age.
At the same time, Japanese makers of medical instruments such as CAT and MRI scanners, robots for automated surgery, and patient-monitoring equipment have become by far the world’s leading producers. In addition, Japan’s expertise in life-support systems, chemical medical analysis, and smart artificial limbs, eyes, ears, hearts, hormones, and even partial brains is unmatched. Even more impressive is what the Japanese medical industry has been able to do with stem cells and stem-cell technology. Aged skin can be rejuvenated and replaced. Badly damaged or diseased internal organs such as the liver and pancreas can be mostly removed and recreated. Of course, many genetic disorders can be diagnosed during the fetal period and prevented by use of a combination of targeted gene removal and replacement and stem-cell treatment.
Perhaps the most important and impressive advance has been the evolution of the Japanese medical profession into the unquestioned world leader. Students and interns from all over the world strive for admittance to