Japan is about to overtake the US to become No.1 in information technology, the key technology of our era. Starting four decades ago with transistor radios and televisions, the Japanese had by the 1970s come to dominate most areas of consumer electronics. In the 1980s, Japanese companies targeted and swiftly captured leadership of the critically important semiconductor industry. Along the way, the Japanese have gained a stranglehold over key areas of advanced manufacturing technology; they have come to reign supreme in modern office equipment such as faxes and photocopiers; and they have even become No.1 in the huge global telecommunications equipment market.