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I appreciate this is a partial answer, but by those standards the US is also similarly behind. For example, still commonly use checks and they are nowhere near transitioning to the metric system.

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While I don't think Japan should be judged solely on its fax machines (they're ahead in some places and behind in others), there is a difference with fax machine usage in Japan vs the US - they're a trailing indicator of another bottleneck. Fax machines are so widespread in Japan largely because they ease the process of physically stamping documents with a registered stamp (a hanko), which is used instead of a signature. So far they've failed to digitize them, and it's often cited as a huge cause of bureaucratic slowdown, especially in the pandemic. One of the goals of the new prime minister is to finally start phasing them out.

> So far they've failed to digitize them, and it's often cited as a huge cause of bureaucratic slowdown, especially in the pandemic.

Compare this to the US where Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures Act[1] back in 2000.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Globa...

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