Although the Japan Prize award for perpendicular magnetic recording is still at the press-show stage, I have heard that it was decided by an overall consideration of its scientific contribution, originality, and the social effect of its result. This could be said as a unification of two values. I have had a strong sympathy and a respect for such philosophy of The Science and Technology Foundation of Japan for a long time. This unification of values was a theme that I discussed from the same perspective as engineers over 10 years ago with Mr. Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, chairman of the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan who was the chairman of the Science Council of Japan at that time, and resonated with each other’s views.

For all of these reasons, I feel that it is a great honor for me to win this award from the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan.

As for perpendicular recording, I feel an utmost joy as a researcher that the technology which I have invented is now incorporated into industrial production with the size of several hundred millions products per year, supporting the lives of many people and also being used by a great number of people.

Also, it is more pleasure that I could have hoped for to know that this invention provides jobs to people in many countries, revitalizes the industry, and helps to overcome the current economic crisis, even if only slightly.

I would like to say a word on my motive for my invention. 50 years ago, I invented the metallic tape which showed a revolutionary performance at that time in horizontal-type recording. This was based on a new interpretation of the AC biasing method to eliminate recording distortions (invented by Prof. Kenzo Nagai in 1938), which considered it to be operating under a large-amplitude magnetic field exceeding the common knowledge at that time. Although metallic tapes are still used today, the horizontal method has a restriction in principle that the magnetic layer must be made thinner to increase the density, and I had already been thinking in the mid-1970s that this matter requires a solution in some time or other as a fundamental issue of magnetic recording technology.

As a result of seeking an answer to this question, I arrived at the invention of perpendicular magnetic recording in 1977. This was based on the discovery of a new fact, showing that perpendicular magnetization increases when high-density recording is done with thick recording media.

When I came up with the idea of this perpendicular magnetization, there was a concurrent experiment at that time on magnetic recording using the magneto-optical effect, and a discovery of perpendicular magnetic film using cobalt chromium alloy was made by sheer chance. Based on this discovery, the research on perpendicular recording developed steadily. In 1980, the bilayer medium by perpendicular/horizontal compound membranes which are the basic form of the current perpendicular magnetic recording, and the recording/playing method by a single magnetic pole-type head were established. Also, there was an advance in understanding the principle regarding the complementarity of characteristics between the perpendicular and horizontal magnetic recording methods.

Thus, the principle of perpendicular recording, recording media, and magnetic head are all based on my ideas, and I am proud to be able to say that these are truly Japan’s original technologies. Since their production and application are spreading overseas including the U.S., I believe that this serves as a satisfactory response to the criticism often said during the 1980s that we have been taking a “free ride on basic research.”

It can be said that magnetic recording began from the early phase of piano wire recording (which can be called a one-dimensional recording along the length only), went through magnetic tape (which is a two-dimensional recording within a plane), and achieved the ultimate three-dimensional recording which uses perpendicular magnetization. That is to say, this is the final form to achieve high-density, and this principle of perpendicular recording will remain unshakable in the future, even though there may be some future improvements in the recording media.

Because of such processes, the goal to realize perpendicular magnetic recording was something that evolved naturally from my research, and it was a theme that nobody except me could have noticed. In that sense, I would say that this research theme was totally unique at the time. That is to say, the research of metallic tape served as a running start for subsequent research in the sense that it determined the limitation of horizontal recording. Without this running start, I don’t think I could have done the research of perpendicular recording with conviction. This is the biggest reason why I was able to continue the research until it achieved success in industrial use, no matter how many years it took. If this were a theme provided by somebody else (such as a priority research theme by the government), I don’t think I could have overcome the “Valley of Death” period in the 1990s because it was not my own idea, and would have a weaker sense of responsibility. If priority issues are compartmentalized to make them specific and given to the researchers, I believe that their sense of responsibility would become weaker because the themes were given by others.

At that time, I established the Committee 144 Magnetic Recording in the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, as I anticipated that perpendicular recording will become a major research theme compared with metallic tape research. I suppose that the establishment of such a research team with me as its leader was based on my research achievements since that on metal tape.

Through the above research experiences, I believe that we need to do the following in order to plan and achieve success in original researches:

○	Develop idea with foresight. Foresight is born from historical perspective on original experimental facts and innovative technologies.
○	Have the courage to take the first. It requires true courage to do something for the very first time in the world.
○	Keep on researching until it becomes useful to people. Cooperation from many people and new organization will be necessary to do this, but preparing such things is also part of the research.

These were followed perfectly in the research of perpendicular magnetic recording, but I believe that the timely trend of digitization helped me in the final stage. Some might describe this as a case of “the times catching up,” because many people had come to need it. I believe that the society will surely catch up if the correct and positive thing is done. In this case, the selection of research theme becomes especially important.

Lastly, I would like to say that technology is related even to civilization. At present, magnetic hard disk drives (HDDs) are supporting the advanced information society where an enormous amount of information of several hundred exa-bytes (10 to the 20th power bytes) is circulating. The industrial scale is expected to be over six hundred million units produced annually in 2010. This will simultaneously serve as a “Rosetta Stone” which will pass this enormous amount of information down the generations at the same time. We are now in an era when information in the brain or one’s whole history can be recorded in HDDs which can be purchased at several tens of thousand yen. I feel that a new era is starting to open up when the individual’s knowledge, or in other words, values will increase drastically. It could also be called a formation of an “IT civilization.”

Chinese / French / Japanese