Photo/Illutration Electronic boards display zeroes for trading volume, trading value and other indexes as transactions were suspended at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Oct. 1. (The Asahi Shimbun)

The rice exchange in Osaka’s Dojima district influenced rice prices nationwide during the Edo Period (1603-1867).

Hand-held flags were the fastest means of conveying market information to regional dealers. People relayed numbers by waving flags at mountaintop posts that afforded clear visibility. The system remained in operation into the Meiji Era (1868-1912).

The manual communication system was pretty fast.

According to “Osaka Dojima Kome Ichiba” (Osaka Dojima Rice Exchange) by economist Yasuo Takatsuki, it took four minutes for the information to reach Kyoto, 15 minutes to get to Okayama and under 40 minutes to reach Hiroshima during the Meiji years.

Flags were replaced by telephones, and that, too, is history for the fully computerized stock exchanges of today.

A system glitch at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Oct. 1 disabled distribution of market information and suspended all trading throughout the day for the first time in history.

In the days of manual telegraphy, someone could stand in when a flag waver became incapacitated. But the modern, mammoth system does not work that way.

So much for the state-of-the-art technology for ultrafast transactions at one-thousandth of a second. Securities houses were reportedly reduced to communicating with their clients by telephone.

The TSE has a history of several shutdowns. The building was burned down in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, and trading was halted after the Tokyo Great Air Raid of March 1945.

System failures have featured prominently at the exchange since the start of this century. I cannot tell whether the computer system is still fragile or if that is the nature of the system itself.

The TSE held a news conference, but the cause of the crash remains unclear.

Some kind of computer system is at work in everything we do today, from working at our jobs to managing our finances.

The TSE shutdown reminds me anew that we are living on top of a colossal black box.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 2

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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