Wednesday, November 9, 1988
7:30 AM
Tokyo, Shimbashi Station West Exit Plaza
The late autumn wind sent withered ginkgo leaves skittering across the gray concrete. The air hung heavy with the sour stink of last night's hangovers and a sharper, unspoken anxiety that clung to the crowd.
Salarymen who usually rushed past were jammed into one corner of the plaza today.
Over a dozen green public phone booths stood in a row.
A despairingly long line had formed in front of every single one. No one spoke. The only sounds were the nervous scuff of leather shoes against pavement and the endless clink-clink of coins dropping into slots.
Although power and signal had sputtered back in some districts, the civilian lines remained unstable — choked by yesterday's panic and hundreds of thousands of simultaneous calls.
"Connect… please, connect!"
A middle-aged man in a beige trench coat pressed the receiver to his ear with white knuckles. His other hand clutched a fistful of ten-yen coins.
Yesterday afternoon, at the exact moment the exchange crashed, he'd just placed a buy order for two thousand shares of Nippon Steel.
Then the screen had gone black.
Now he didn't know if the trade had executed, if it was stuck in limbo, or if it had dissolved into worthless data. That was the money he'd saved for his daughter's study-abroad fund.
Beep… beep…
A ringback tone finally crackled through the receiver.
Relief flooded the man's face like a drowning man grabbing driftwood.
Then—
Bzzzt—
A burst of harsh static, followed by that soul-crushing busy signal.
Clatter.
The unswallowed coins tumbled into the return slot.
"Bastard! Give me back my money!"
The man snapped. He pounded the glass of the booth, screaming into the mouthpiece until spit flecked the cramped interior.
No one behind him moved to stop him. No one mocked him. They just watched, faces ashen, their eyes reflecting the same fear.
In that moment, they all understood one thing:
Without that flimsy telephone line, the bankbooks in their pockets were nothing but pulp.
10:00 AM
Otemachi, NTT Headquarters Building, Conference Room No. 1
Flashbulbs exploded like a white storm, swallowing the figures on the podium.
The head of NTT's Public Relations Department stood at the microphone. This bureaucrat, used to a life of quiet comfort, was now sweating through his collar. He kept dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief, but sweat still traced down his temples and soaked his carefully ironed shirt until it clung, transparent and pathetic.
"Regarding the communication disruption that occurred yesterday…"
The chief's voice was dry, with a faint tremor that the microphone magnified.
"After an overnight investigation by the technical department, we have preliminarily determined that a momentary data flood, triggered by large-scale overseas transactions, caused the main control CPU of the Marunouchi station's D70 digital switch to overload."
He turned a page of his statement and swallowed.
"This is also… a physical design limit. Facing such an unprecedented surge in traffic, the current switching hardware does indeed have objective bottlenecks."
The reporters immediately stirred.
"Are you suggesting this was an act of God?" A reporter from the Asahi Shimbun stood, his tone sharp. "Did the system crash because too many people wanted to make a call?"
The chief refused to meet the reporter's eyes. He dropped his gaze and read straight into the mic:
"This is a limitation of the era. Even America's AT&T would struggle to guarantee service under this volume of instantaneous concurrent requests…"
He was dodging.
He was telling the citizens of Japan: It's not incompetence. The enemy was too strong. The technology just hasn't caught up.
The arrogant logic of a monopoly.
Normally, that excuse might have worked.
But today, right beside the live feed of this press conference, another scene was being broadcast into millions of homes…
12:30 PM
A special emergency program from Wenwen News: "The Archipelago Trembles: The Day the Financial Arteries Died."
The TV signal cut in. Urgent red banners scrolled across the bottom:
The screen split in two — a brutal, high-contrast montage.
"Everyone, please look at these images."
The host's voice was calm and grave, backed by chaotic on-site audio.
Left side:
Raw handheld footage, the camera shaking violently. The bank's iron shutters were half-lowered. A sign on the ATM blinked "Communication Failure, Service Suspended" and flapped in the wind.
In frame, a middle-aged company president had a bank clerk by the collar, his voice cracked raw: "My bill of exchange! That's my lifeblood! Is my factory supposed to go bankrupt because your lines are down?!"
Cries, shouts, sirens — they tore through the speakers. It looked like hell.
"Meanwhile, just around the corner from this street…"
The screen cut to the right:
The camera glided forward smoothly.
The store was brightly lit, soft BGM playing. A young clerk in uniform smiled as he handed a rice ball to a customer.
Beep—
The crisp sound of a barcode scanner. Short, sharp, and almost obscene in its normalcy on a morning like this.
Then the clack-clack of keys and the soft whir of a receipt printing.
"That will be 350 yen. Out of 500 yen, your change is 150 yen. Thank you for your business."
Precise and No delay.
While Japan's financial arteries were clotting inside NTT's switches, this convenience store's data flowed like breathing.
The image froze.
Studio lights came up.
The host adjusted his glasses, looked straight into the camera, and delivered the killing blow:
"Just now, NTT claimed at their press conference that this accident happened because 'transaction volume exceeded physical limits' — an 'act of God of the era.'"
He pointed to the screen behind him, frozen on the receipt sliding out of the register.
"So we have to ask: why is it that, under the same sky, right next to a paralyzed bank, S-Food's data transmission is as smooth as breathing?"
"Does this convenience store use technology from the future? Or…"
He paused, voice sharpening.
"Is the so-called 'physical limit' just a fig leaf NTT uses to hide institutional rot?"
The camera cut to the guest seat.
A cool-headed technical expert in a tailored suit sat there. The caption read: .
He held a pointer, not a script, and turned to the diagram board behind him.
Two network topologies were drawn side by side.
"The principle isn't complicated," he said. His pointer tapped the diagram on the left — a congested straight line, red dots of data jammed in the middle.
"NTT still uses old 'circuit switching' logic. Think of it as a single-lane bridge. When one car breaks down, the entire road locks up. No matter how many emergency vehicles are behind it, they just have to kill their engines and wait."
"This is twentieth-century thinking."
His pointer slid to the right.
A complex mesh. Data packets fragmented and flowing like water, routing through countless paths.
"S-Food's supply chain uses 'distributed packet switching' based on the TCP/IP protocol."
He turned to the camera, studio lights glinting off his lenses.
"For our system, the road isn't a single line. It's a web. When a clot forms at the Marunouchi node, data automatically reroutes through Chiba, Yokohama, or even detours through Osaka and loops back."
"This isn't just a generational gap in tech."
He set the pointer down and delivered the line that would lead tomorrow's evening papers:
"While NTT is still trying to patch a rotting carriage path, Saionji Industries has already built an airplane."
"This isn't a natural disaster. This is necrosis of the mind."
2:00 PM
Public opinion turned.
Until now, the public's anger at NTT had been chalked up to "bad luck" and "accidents" — just another infrastructure failure.
But Wenwen News had cut the wound open and shown the rot inside.
It wasn't that they couldn't do it. They didn't do it.
So the phone bills we pay have been feeding fossils trapped in the Showa era.
That sense of being played for fools spread fast.
In Ginza electronics stores, crowds around the TVs started cursing.
In taxis, drivers heard the radio reports and slammed their steering wheels.
Housewives in supermarkets stared at the smooth receipts in their hands, then thought of the dead phones at home, and their eyes filled with contempt.
Mainstream papers caught the wind.
The Yomiuri Shimbun's evening edition scrapped its neutral report and ran a new headline:
"NTT's Arrogance: Who Pays for the 3 Trillion Yen That Evaporated?"
3:00 PM
Nagatacho, House of Representatives Budget Committee
This was the heart of Japanese politics. Today, it was also the blade edge of the Saionji Family's will.
The massive hall was hushed.
A lean politician with sharp eyes stood at the interpellation stand.
Katsuya Tsunetaka — a "reformist" with close ties to the Saionji Family. With their backing, he'd chosen to be the assassin today.
"Minister of Posts and Telecommunications."
Katsuya's voice echoed under the dome. He held no script, only the screenshot from Wenwen News.
"Please look at this image."
The Minister across from him had gone pale. He held regulatory power over NTT, but right now he felt like he was sitting on needles.
"A private enterprise. A company that sells rice balls and oden. They spent whatever it took to build the most advanced distributed network, just to make sure a few-hundred-yen transaction goes through."
Katsuya slapped the photo onto the podium.
"Yet NTT — with a massive national budget and a monopoly over Japan's communication lifelines — tells the public the system crashed because 'too many people' used it?"
"This isn't a technical issue."
Katsuya's gaze swept the committee, then locked on the Minister.
"This is systemic rot."
"NTT's monopoly has become the biggest clot in Japan's economic arteries. They're napping on past glory while citizens' wealth evaporates in the wait."
"I demand—"
Katsuya raised his voice.
"That the Diet immediately establish a special investigation committee. Audit NTT's equipment procurement, trace where the R&D funds went, and determine whether they've abused their monopoly to suppress technological innovation."
"If we can't excise this tumor, how can Japan claim to be a financial empire? We can't even beat a convenience store!"
Uproar.
The hall exploded. Opposition lawmakers pounded their desks. Even factions in the ruling party leaned in, whispering, eyes calculating.
The Minister pulled out a handkerchief and wiped cold sweat from his brow. He knew this wasn't an interpellation.
This was a declaration of war.
Capital that lurked in the shadows was using public opinion as a blade, cutting straight into the old telecom monopoly.
Outside, the sun was setting.
The shadow of the National Diet Building stretched long, swallowing half of Nagatacho.
And in the Bunkyo Ward garden, where that shadow couldn't reach…
Satsuki clapped her hands. The last crumbs of fish food drifted from her fingertips into the wind.