The following paper was recently presented by Kamlesh Ramji VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES IN JAPAN 1. Abstract In recent years, virtual communities have proliferated thanks to the converging technologies of telecommunications and computing. In the United States, numerous virtual communities exist in the form of bulletin boards, newsgroups, computer conferencing, etc. and have been expanding its scope beyond the national boundaries. But, those virtual communities originating in the United States carry heavy American-biased culture which members often take …showed first 75 words of 4424 total…

…showed last 75 words of 4424 total…to Unix Copy) protocol. JUNET utilizes UUCP connections instead of full IP connections and its services are basically limited to news and elec tronic mail. When JUNET began, international communications had to be in English or romanized Japanese, but later Kanji support in a windowed user interface to the messaging systems was included. Since then the amount of public traffic as well as JUNET membership has increased dramatically (Shapard, 1993). Subsequently the network has expanded throug