I believe that the evaluation of the FGCS project will take considerable time and 
effort, and I also fear that the international community will not fully understand the 
impact of the FGCS on Japan and even on the world computer science community. 
I firmly believe that Japan has become a significant force in the computer science 
community and that the important point is that this position was achieved during a 
short-term project and for modest cost. Japan should not waste this opportunity to 
remain actively and productively engaged in a core area of basic computer science re-
search. FGCS has, to a large extent, decided the directions of the logic programming 
community and heavily influenced parallel processing projects around the world. 

Many in the United States are confused about how to evaluate the FGCS because 
the Japanese R&D process is not well understood. However, the average person in the 
United States does not fully understand the R&D process in the United States either! 
What is important is that the process of becoming open-the distribution of software 
and the evaluation of progress-be continued. 

It is also important to remember that in basic research a negative result is not a 
failure but that the process of uncovering truth is pursued despite setbacks from time 
to time. 

Many people, I think, desired to evaluate the FGCS project as an advanced develop-
ment project, where an inability to get to product development is considered a failure. 
What many do not understand is exactly what the goals really were. Did Japan really 
want to develop prototypes for products? Was there a hope that industrial companies 
would adopt the technology and revolutionize the computer industry? 

The most difficult point for the outside community to consider is what specific 
problems have been solved and what technological breakthroughs have occurred. The 
lack of clearly showing these things has caused many to discount the accomplishments. 

The United States was evaluating the FGCS as both a basic research project and 
as an advanced development project. As a basic research project and as an advanced 
development project, therefore, it could have been considered a success if one or more 
hard problems in AI or CS had been solved or if a commercial company had committed 
to producing products based on the results of development. Have these things hap-
pened but not been revealed? 

When the FGCS project was first announced, it created a storm of controversy in 
the United States and Europe. I think that both countries feared the project for two 
main reasons. 

1. It fundamentally challenged their notions of preeminence in basic research. 
2. If commercial products resulted from the project, Japan would have taken a 


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