Japan's Fifth Generation project

At a conference in Tokyo, Japan made public a ten-year programme to build machines founded on logical inference rather than number crunching.

Why it matters

A state declared AI a national priority for the first time, and thereby pushed the United States and Britain to restore the funding they had cut.

The project aimed at parallel machines executing logical inference, with languages based on Prolog. The response was quick: MCC in the United States, the Alvey programme in Britain, ESPRIT in Europe. It ended in 1992 having spent some 54 billion yen; the hardware bet on logic programming did not pay off, because general-purpose processors grew cheap faster.

Event record

Event date

October 1981

Timeline date

Event date

Verification

Sources gathered automatically · September 17, 2026

Lines

ID

evt-0139

The international conference in Tokyo in October 1981, where the programme was made public. The ministry started the project itself in 1982, when ICOT was founded; this record marks the announcement, not the start.

Sources

primary Fifth Generation Computer Systems: Proceedings of the International Conference, Tokyo, October 1981
North-Holland · Published 1981
secondary Start of the 5th Generation Computer Project for Knowledge-Based Information Processing
Information Processing Society of Japan
secondary The Japanese National Fifth Generation Project: Introduction, Survey, and Evaluation (Edward A. Feigenbaum, Howard Shrobe)
Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 9 (Elsevier; copy in the Stanford Digital Repository) · Published 1993

Related events

Earlier

Related The Art of Artificial Intelligence 1977
The same bet: knowledge processing as the basis of the next generation of machines.
Builds on Prolog 1972
The programme was built around logic programming, that is, around Prolog.
- Fifth Generation Computer Systems: Proceedings of the International Conference, Tokyo, October 1981 · North-Holland

Later

Builds on Britain's Alvey Programme 1983links to this record
In the Lords the Government called the programme a response to the Japanese national initiative, and the minister described the research as what is 'not wholly accurately' called fifth generation computers.
- Advanced Information Technology: The Alvey Report, House of Lords, 28 April 1983, vol. 441 (the statement repeated by Lord Trefgarne, and questions) · UK Parliament, Hansard
- Advanced Information Technology, House of Commons, 28 April 1983, vol. 41, col. 1006 ff. (statement by the Secretary of State for Industry, Patrick Jenkin) · UK Parliament, Hansard
Related Strategic Computing: DARPA's plan 1983links to this record
The second state programme for machine intelligence in the same decade; the plan itself does not name the Japanese one.
Related Europe's ESPRIT programme 1984links to this record
The third programme of those years to promise 'the next computer generation' through knowledge processing; the decision does not name Japan.
Related The «Dark Ages of AI» panel and the «AI Winter» 1984links to this record
The same scenario supposes the fifth generation «doesn't go anywhere» and Japan's government leaves computing; the panel asks whether ICOT will be a stabilising force.
Related The Connection Machine 1985links to this record
A second bet of those years on parallel architecture for AI workloads.
Extends FGCS'92: the ten years of the Fifth Generation summed up 1992links to this record
The record of the project's announcement in 1981; these documents of ICOT give its outcome: the goal of 1982, the budget by stage and the state at the start of 1992.
- Fifth Generation Computer Systems 1992, vol. 1, ed. Institute for New Generation Computer Technology (Ohmsha / IOS Press, 1992): Foreword and preface; K. Fuchi, «Launching the New Era»; T. Kurozumi, «General Report on ICOT Research and Development: Overview of the Ten Years of the FGCS Project»; S. Uchida, «Summary of the Parallel Inference Machine and its Basic Software» · ICOT (Institute for New Generation Computer Technology); scan on bitsavers / Internet Archive
Related China's New Generation AI Development Plan 2017links to this record
The second time in history a state made AI a national priority.
Related The Bletchley Declaration 2023links to this record
The previous international event of this kind was the Tokyo conference of 1981.