Since the "June 27 Incident", the Japanese government began to re-examine the information barriers that had long existed among central ministries, local governments, and public institutions.
In July 1991, the administrative information mutual connection plan, co-designed by the Saionji Information System (SIS), completed its first round of closed testing.
This plan did not require the government to scrap its existing mainframe computers and business systems. Instead, by adding new gateways, unifying exchange formats, and re-dividing data access permissions, it enabled the previously independent resident registration, taxation, welfare, and partial public affairs systems to conduct limited information exchanges.
The test results far exceeded the government's initial expectations.
Administrative inquiries that previously relied on phones, faxes, and paper documents and took hours or even days to complete often took only a few minutes in the new system.
At the same time, a large amount of repetitive data entry, document verification, and cross-departmental transfer work long undertaken by civil servants began to decrease rapidly with the deployment of the system.
Saionji's technicians were responsible for the maintenance of equipment, lines, and interfaces during the trial period.
In August of the same year, this system was first put into practical trial in some administrative organs of Minato Ward, Koto Ward, and Shinagawa Ward in Tokyo.
The official reason given was very simple: the Saionji Group possessed well-established computing facilities, dedicated communication lines, and technical maintenance strength on the Tokyo Bay coast, which could minimize the operating costs and accident risks during the trial phase.
This choice caused almost no controversy at the time.
However, later researchers rarely regarded it as a pure administrative informatization reform.
Academia generally believed that this was also one of the important reasons for the emergence of a new class.
Because the upgrade of the vast majority of public facilities revolved around "Saionji-related assets", this made various public facilities in areas with Saionji assets far superior to those in areas without Saionji assets.
For the first time, using infrastructure, public service efficiency, and living convenience as a material foundation, it artificially separated a new group within the same country.
They were called —— "Corporate Citizens."
—— Excerpted from "History of the Transition of the Heisei Order — The State, Corporations, and Japanese Society, 1989-2005"
"Good morning, Senior! Starting today, I will be mentored by Senior Takagi, please give me your guidance!"
Naoto Miyamoto bowed deeply, his voice so loud that two employees nearby who were organizing documents both looked up.
Takagi was stunned for a moment.
"Well, well, your form is very standard..."
Looking at the young man in front of him whose waist was bent almost ninety degrees, he smiled and waved his hand.
"But you do not have to be so uptight. It is Heisei now; are you telling me the person in charge of your new hire orientation is a Shōwa person?"
Miyamoto quickly straightened his body.
"I am deeply sorry!"
"What are you apologizing for?"
"Because it seemed like I just disturbed the other seniors."
"..."
Takagi looked back.
The person at the next desk who had just raised their head was already smiling and lowering it again.
Looking back at Miyamoto, he suddenly understood a bit why the Section Chief had dumped this kid on him.
"Sit down first."
"Yes!"
"Just keep your voice down a bit."
"...Yes."
Miyamoto obediently sat down beside him.
However, his sitting posture was still a bit too upright, with both hands placed on his knees, not even touching the back of the chair.
Takagi placed his coffee on the edge of the desk and pulled out his chair.
Tokyo at the end of August was still very hot.
The office of the Minato Ward Office already had the air conditioning turned on, but near the corridor, one could still feel a bit of the heat brought in from outside.
There were still a dozen minutes before the windows opened.
Staff members were arriving at their posts one after another, and the phones had not really started ringing yet; only the printers and a few business terminals occasionally made slight sounds.
"Let me see, Naoto Miyamoto, right..." Takagi picked up Miyamoto's file, looked up at him, and asked, "You came in in April?"
"Yes. Officially hired on April 1st this year."
"Just graduated from university?"
"Yes, Faculty of Law."
Takagi nodded with sudden realization and put down the file in his hand.
"No wonder."
Miyamoto did not understand for a moment and did not know how to respond, so he bit the bullet and asked softly again.
"Uh... Senior?"
"Oh, I mean, you look like you are really good at taking exams."
"Yes! My grades at school all reached..."
"——Stop, stop, stop, stop."
Takagi interrupted him with a smile.
"Do not be nervous, rookie-kun. I am not really asking about your grades."
He picked up a thin folder from the edge of the desk again and waved it in front of Miyamoto.
"Besides, school grades will not teach you how to handle business. To what extent do you understand our work?"
Miyamoto's expression instantly turned serious, and his already straight back became even straighter.
"Yes, Senior. Before coming here, I reviewed the basic procedures of the Ward Residents Division again."
"If it is a general resident relocation, I should be able to handle it independently."
"Should?"
Miyamoto panicked a bit and immediately corrected himself.
"Sorry! I will work hard to make it happen!"
Takagi could not help laughing as he looked at him looking like he was going to stand up and swear an oath the next second.
"Alright, alright."
He waved his hand.
"I am not really testing you."
As he spoke, Takagi lowered his head to glance at Miyamoto's desk.
The business manual was placed right in the middle, and next to it was a notebook that had clearly been organized by himself.
The edges of the pages were covered with small slips of paper of different colors, and an extra transcribed extension number table was placed next to the telephone.
Takagi reached out and picked it up.
The handwriting inside was neat and orderly. The basic resident ledger registration process, materials required for transfer-in and transfer-out procedures, extension number of the National Health Insurance Division, filling format for the Taxation Division inquiry slip, contact window of the Welfare Division, and the corresponding person in charge were all copied and classified by department, with the reference document numbers and page numbers marked after each item.
Takagi flipped forward a few pages. Even the differences in phone response rates of various offices during lunch breaks were recorded.
"You record this too?"
"When calling other offices during the lunch break, the connection rate will drop. If a resident's business involves cross-office inquiries, this time period should be avoided as much as possible for initiating contact, otherwise it may require repeated dialing."
Miyamoto said rigidly, answering extremely fast.
Takagi returned the notebook to him.
"You are quite well-prepared."
Miyamoto sat even straighter. "Thank you, Senior."
"I am not complimenting you." Takagi took a sip of coffee and put the empty can aside. "I just want to say that some of the things you memorized are no longer useful."
Miyamoto froze.
"No longer useful?"
Takagi did not explain immediately. He turned around and dragged a terminal out from the right side of the desk.
The screen was slightly larger than the business terminals Miyamoto had seen during his orientation, and next to it was an extra set of interfaces and indicator lights that he had never seen before.
"Just installed this month, Saionji's goods." Takagi patted the casing. "Administrative Information Mutual Connection System, trial terminal. You should have heard of it at the seminar."
Miyamoto nodded, desperately rummaging through his memory for this item.
The July business briefing session had indeed mentioned that this scheme was about to be deployed in the Minato Ward Office.
The lecturer spent about twenty minutes introducing the basic concepts and handed out an operation manual. After going back, Miyamoto read the manual from cover to cover twice and took notes.
It is just that at that time, all the attention in his heart was focused on how to firmly memorize the old process.
After all, for a rookie who had only joined in April and had not even truly independently handled the most basic window responses yet, a new system that had not yet been officially launched did not rank high in his priorities.
Takagi took one look at his expression and knew what was going on.
"How about this." Takagi picked up a blank business acceptance form from the desk. "I will give you a problem first."
Miyamoto reflexively straightened his posture.
"A Minato Ward resident is relocating within the ward. The new residence has been determined, and the person comes to the window to process the relocation notification. At the same time, they want to confirm the relevant procedures for the National Health Insurance." Takagi pushed the acceptance form in front of him. "Tell me, what should be done."
Miyamoto barely thought about it.
"First, confirm the person's identity and notification materials. After the relocation notification is accepted, update the residence record on the basic resident ledger."
He spoke at a very fast pace, listing them one by one.
"If it also involves National Health Insurance, it is necessary to confirm the resident's current enrollment status and notification obligations. In the case of relocation within the ward, the insurance qualification itself is not affected, but the address on the insurance card needs to be updated after the residence change."
He paused for a moment.
"In addition, since affairs related to the National Health Insurance are under the jurisdiction of the National Health Insurance Division, the Ward Residents Division window cannot handle it directly. I need to initiate an internal inquiry to the National Health Insurance Division to confirm the resident's qualification status and insurance card information."
He opened his notebook and quickly found the corresponding page.
"The extension of the National Health Insurance Division is 3217, and the inquiry slip uses the B-04 format, indicating the resident's name, resident registration number, and inquiry items. After confirmation, the other party will reply via extension, or sign and stamp the inquiry slip and return it."
"The above is the processing procedure for the corresponding situation. Please give me your instructions, Senior."
After listening, Takagi nodded.
"Hmm... There is no problem with the procedure."
Miyamoto breathed a sigh of relief.
"However, what you just said," Takagi tapped the frame of the new terminal on the desk twice, "is last month's practice."
Miyamoto's mouth opened and then closed again.
"Now the government is cooperating with Saionji, and many of the complicated operations from before have been integrated into this system. The efficiency is much faster than before."
"Take the basic query of National Health Insurance qualifications that you just mentioned as an example. Now standard inquiry items involving the status of National Health Insurance qualifications can be initiated directly from this terminal, without needing to run around looking for people."
Miyamoto nodded seriously and began taking notes earnestly again.
"Alright. Handling it yourself later will be more useful than me lecturing you for half a day now."
Takagi raised his head and glanced at the clock on the wall.
Half-past eight.
"All right."
He stood up and stretched his shoulders.
"Today you sit inside, and I will be right beside you."
Miyamoto froze, his expression somewhat uneasy.
"Senior, are we starting practical work today?"
Takagi turned his head back.
"Have not you been studying for several months?"
"But before, I was always following my senior..."
"Then how long are you planning to follow me?"
Miyamoto was momentarily speechless.
Seeing him starting to get nervous again, Takagi reached out and patted him twice on the shoulder.
"Do the simple ones yourself."
"Ask me if you are not sure."
"I am sitting so close, and I will not suddenly disappear."
Miyamoto looked at the chair next to him and finally nodded.
"Yes, thank you very much!"
Pausing for a moment, he added another sentence.
"I will do my best."
"Mm, got it."
In the short time the two of them were talking, the first batch of residents had already been let in through the first-floor entrance.
The office, which had still seemed somewhat relaxed, suddenly became busy. The sounds of telephone calls, footsteps, and inquiries in front of the windows gradually blended together.
Before long, the first resident sat down in front of Miyamoto.
The first few matters were not complicated.
Someone came to pick up a certificate, someone was just asking about the processing location, and another person talked at the window for a long time before finally realizing they should go upstairs.
At the beginning, every time Miyamoto finished handling a person, he would instinctively glance to the side.
Takagi, however, kept his head down organizing his own materials, and would not intervene at all unless Miyamoto took the initiative to call him.
After a few times, Miyamoto gradually relaxed.
A little after nine, a young woman holding a child sat down in front of the window.
"Excuse me, is changing the address after moving house done here?"
Miyamoto immediately sat up straight.
"Yes."
"Are you moving within Minato Ward, or moving in from other municipalities?"
"Still Minato Ward."
The woman placed her folder on the window ledge.
"We moved from Azabu to Shibaura."
As she flipped through her documents, she lowered her head to look at the child in her arms.
"My husband also asked me to check if the National Health Insurance requires going to a separate window. I did not quite catch it when I asked last time."
"Alright, let me first confirm the contents of the moving notification."
He began checking them item by item.
Name, old and new addresses, notification date, head-of-household information. The materials were prepared very thoroughly with no omissions.
While entering the changes into the Basic Resident Register system, Miyamoto was already arranging the subsequent procedures in his mind.
National Health Insurance eligibility confirmation, health insurance card address change—his fingers instinctively reached towards the stack of inquiry slips on the desk.
"Miyamoto."
Takagi's voice came from behind.
Miyamoto's hand stopped.
He turned his head to glance at Takagi, then turned back to look at the terminal next to the window.
"...Ah."
He stuffed back the communication slip that he had already pulled out halfway.
"Please wait a moment," Miyamoto said to the woman in front of him, then moved his chair half a meter to the right to face the terminal.
Fortunately, he had indeed memorized the steps in the terminal's operation manual, so he would not be flustered and clueless about what to do on his first day of practical work.
Select the inquiry category, enter the resident record number, check the query items, confirm the permission scope, send.
A line of waiting prompts appeared on the screen.
Miyamoto stared at those words.
He waited for about fifteen seconds.
The screen refreshed. The National Health Insurance Section's business system returned the query results. Insured person eligibility confirmation, current applicable classification, and items that needed to be updated after the address change were all listed above.
Miyamoto looked at it once, then looked at it again.
"...Just like that?"
His voice was very soft when he said this. But Takagi, sitting behind him, still heard it, chuckled, and said nothing.
Miyamoto turned around to face the window.
"Your National Health Insurance eligibility has been confirmed. The address change can also be handled together here. The information update for the insurance card will take approximately—" He lowered his head to glance at the explanatory text in the bottom right corner of the screen. "A few business days for the new insurance card to be mailed to your new address."
After finishing, still somewhat uneasy, he turned his head sideways to glance at Takagi.
Takagi nodded at him.
Only then did Miyamoto turn back to face the resident.
After listening, the woman did not reply immediately; she froze for a moment while holding her child.
"It is already done?"
"Yes."
"Even the National Health Insurance side?"
"Yes, it was just confirmed."
The woman's expression changed slightly. She looked down at her watch, then looked up at the number plate above the window.
"I took my number at nine, and now it is only..."
Miyamoto also glanced at the time. Nine-twelve.
"When my husband came to handle this last year, just waiting for them to call back took nearly an hour," the woman put the insurance card back into the document bag. "Today I even left the time for entrusting my child to my mother-in-law until the afternoon, thinking it would take at least half a day."
She lowered her head to look at the child in her arms; the child had already fallen asleep leaning against her shoulder.
"If I had known it was this fast, I would not have had to trouble my mother-in-law."
She expressed her thanks and left the window holding her child.
Miyamoto watched her walk out the door of the Citizens' Section before turning his chair back.
Takagi was just putting down the official documents in his hand.
"How was it?"
"...Much faster than I thought," Miyamoto said honestly.
"That is because you did not experience the past," Takagi picked up the coffee can, found it was empty, and put it back down. "There was a time last year when I called the internal line for the National Health Insurance side. The opposite window was also busy, and the phone rang more than twenty times before someone answered. After answering, they said they needed to check and told me to wait. So I waited."
He reached out and gestured a number.
"Forty minutes."
Miyamoto cooperatively opened his mouth.
"That resident was sitting right in front of the window waiting for me. I could not hang up either; if I hung up, I would not know when I could get connected again. In the middle, that resident asked me once, 'How much longer?' I could only say 'Please wait a moment longer'."
Takagi shrugged at this point.
"Actually, I did not know how long it would take either."
Miyamoto imagined the scene back then.
A resident sitting outside the window waiting, a civil servant holding the receiver sitting inside the window waiting, neither of them knowing when someone on the other end of the phone would speak again...
"When this system was being installed, I found it annoying," Takagi waved his hand toward the terminal. "Saionji's technical personnel wandered around the section room every day, either confirming lines or testing interfaces, and one time they even made us unable to use the copier for the entire morning. At that time, I really felt, why make a fuss when things were fine."
He patted the desk.
"After using it, I stopped thinking that way."
He looked at Miyamoto.
"If we do not have to make a phone call, why make one?"
Close to noon, the people queueing in front of the windows decreased a bit.
Miyamoto picked it up very quickly, and the usage procedures of the new system gradually became familiar.
At first, he still needed Takagi to remind him a few words on the side, but by close to noon, most common tasks could be handled by himself.
Close to eleven o'clock, the ticketing machine rang again.
The newcomer was a middle-aged man wearing a shirt, carrying a paper bag in his left hand and holding an application form with quite a bit of writing on it in his right hand.
Miyamoto took the materials and glanced over the contents.
The section confirmation items involved in this application were something he had seen in his notes—categorized as a cross-departmental special inquiry with a low processing frequency, which was currently not within the scope of what the pilot system had connected to.
His hand naturally reached for the keyboard of the new terminal.
Halfway through typing, he realized that there was no such option in the system menu at all.
Miyamoto stared at the screen for a few seconds.
He exited the query interface, returned to the business classification list, flipped through it from beginning to end, and confirmed it once.
Indeed, there was not any.
Having no other choice, he turned around and pulled out a blank intra-section inquiry slip from the left side of the desk.
The header, date column, sending section, receiving section, inquiry matters, reply deadline on the form—every single box needed to be filled out by hand.
He had memorized these formats very well; after all, two months ago he started out relying on these things.
Miyamoto picked up his pen and began filling in the sending section name on the inquiry slip.
After writing three characters, the pen tip stopped.
He looked at the piece of paper in his hand.
The surface of the paper had a faint yellow tint, the grid lines were printed with blue ink, and there was a small serial number in the bottom right corner.
Just this morning, he still felt that this form was a matter of course. More than half of the cross-section businesses in the entire ward office relied on it to operate.
Knowing how to fill out inquiry slips was a basic skill that a newcomer had to learn starting from the training stage.
At that time, he even rejoiced that he had memorized it well.
Holding it now, the feeling in his hand was no longer the same as this morning.
"What is wrong?"
Takagi's voice came from the side.
Miyamoto raised his head.
"Nothing, senior," he said, continuing to fill it out.
Takagi looked at him for a moment.
"Only a morning," he leaned back against his chair, a slight smile on the corner of his mouth. "And you are already starting to disdain it?"
Miyamoto's lips moved.
He wanted to say no.
But these two words spun around in his throat and could not be spoken out.
Takagi did not wait for his answer either. He just smiled, shook his head, and lowered his head again to process his official documents.
Miyamoto was silent for a moment, picked up his pen and finished filling out the remaining columns. He stood up and walked toward the delivery slot.
Someone pushed a document cart past in the corridor, and the ringing of a telephone came from the next section room.
Outside the window, the next resident had already sat down, clutching a number plate in their hand and flipping through a thin guide to administrative procedures.
The ward office operated as usual.
There was almost no difference from yesterday.
But civil servants of Miyamoto's generation had already begun to become the first batch of people who truly got used to this new system.
In the many years to come, they would enter various section rooms, departments, and local organs, gradually turning today's still-novel way of working into a matter of course.
At this time, not many people realized that a habit that initially could not even be called "reliance" had already begun to slowly take root in Japan's administrative system.