Japanese culture is quite different from the west, especially in respect to their attitude to computers. In business, and I guess politics too, attitudes to computers were cemented in the days of the room scale mainframes. A mainframe computer was viewed like any other industrial machine - something that was run by operators, and the suits didn't get their hands dirty with actually using the things.
Roll forward to the PC revolution, and you get to a point in western economies where facility with Excel becomes a nearly essential skill in white collar jobs, but in the land of the rising sun, the 'computers are managed by operators' attitude has pervaded. Bosses still dictate replies ( to printed emails ) to their secretaries for response.