Captured in 1999 at Tokyo’s Ministry of Social Affairs, this open-plan office shows staff seated at early computer terminals that resemble laptops – reflecting Japan’s shift from paperwork towards digital workflow. Compact business computers, developed domestically since the 1960s, had by the late ’90s become central to administrative tasks in government offices like these.

Filing cabinets, telephones and paper files remain visible, illustrating the hybrid nature of the space: a ministry balancing traditional bureaucracy with emerging modernisation on the cusp of the new millennium.

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