Japan is home to one of the largest internet user bases in the Asia Pacific region. The country has a highly developed telecommunications industry and a very high internet penetration rate, although the degree of penetration differs with factors such as age, region, and income level. While the internet has been used by the majority of people in Japan since the mid-2000s, geographical differences remain, for instance, between the more urban area of southern Kanto, which includes the capital city Tokyo, and more rural areas, such as Tohoku or Hokuriku.
Accessing the worldwide web
Internet in Japan usually comes unbundled, which means that customers, in general, have contracts both with a line provider and an internet service provider (ISP). The main landline providers in Japan are NTT East and NTT West, which are both subsidiaries of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). Leading ISPs include companies such as Asahi Net, Biglobe, Nifty Corporation, NTT Plala, and So-net. Commercial internet services have been available since the early 1990s, with mobile internet developing from the late 1990s onwards. The main mobile carriers in Japan are NTT Docomo, au by KDDI, and SoftBank. These three companies have been facing competition from Rakuten, which launched its own mobile carrier service in April 2020. As a
breakdown of internet connection types shows, a majority of Japanese households are using optical fiber and mobile phone lines. Apple iOS is the
leading mobile operating system, as it accounts for about two-thirds of mobile web traffic.
Popular online activities
The
most common reasons for using the internet in Japan are social networking services, e-mail communication, and the looking up of information. Among social networks, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter) enjoy a particularly high popularity, while LINE continues to be the dominant messaging app. A ranking of the
most popular websites based on average monthly traffic was led by the search engine websites Google and Yahoo. Survey data show that the
time people spend on using the internet has increased significantly in recent years. Next to the spread of smartphones and tablets during the 2010s, which has made it much more convenient to stay online for extended periods of time regardless of one’s place, the COVID pandemic exerted a particularly strong influence on people’s online consumption. In addition, the increasing adoption of 5G networks since March 2020 is thought to have a beneficial effect on the online entertainment market. Japan has for a long time been one of the largest mobile gaming markets and the use of streaming services has become more and more common since the mid-2010s, which is partly a result of the increased market competition brought about by major international services, such as Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify.
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