This book contains chapters written by eminent scientists on the latest de- velopment in computer technology and applications in Japan. The material contained in this book is an edited version of the presenta- tion at a seminar arranged by the Computational Mechanics Institute of the Wessex Institute of Technology at Southampton during 1989. The objective of the Seminar was to provide an awareness of the considerable advances being made by Japanese scientists in the general area of information tech- nology and in the so-called Fifth Generation Computer Systems. In the first chapter, Watanabe of the NEC Corporation, describes advanced architecture and technology of supercomputing systems. This theme is fol- lowed by Nakamura of Tohoku University in the next chapter. Another type of supercomputer for vector processing, the FACOM VP 2000 Series is then described by Uchida of Fujitsu Ltd in Chapter Three. Expert systems are presented in the next two chapters by Ueno and Oomari of Tokyo Denki University and by Koseki and Goto of the NEC Corpora- tion. Important applications in computer graphics are described in Chapter Six by Ishii and Murakami of Fujitsu Laboratories.
Hayashi from the same Laboratory then discusses neurocomputers in Japan. The final chapter by Noguchi of Tohoku University illustrates an important application in com- munications. The Editors acknowledge the help of Computational Mechanics Publica- tions in the preparation and sub-editing of the manuscript and are grateful for the high standards of presentation.