I found this article on the Bank of Japan's confidence level through a link on ZDNet: BOJ Watch: Y2K-Proof Funds-Transfer System Goes Online

Text follows, just in case:

Wednesday, January 27, 1999 BOJ Watch: Y2K-Proof Funds-Transfer System Goes Online

TOKYO (Nikkei)--The Bank of Japan announced Tuesday that its BOJ-NET funds-transfer system is now ready to face the year 2000 without a computer crash.

Backbone programs and various applications have been revised and upgraded to ensure that BOJ-NET will not misinterpret the year 2000 as 1900.

The BOJ is also pushing a wider initiative for major payment and settlement systems, as well as participating financial institutions, to address the year-2000 problem.

On Dec. 20 of last year, the central bank orchestrated external tests of BOJ-NET and three other major payment and settlement systems, as well as one information system, in a simulated year-2000 environment.

Further tests of the ability of participating financial institutions to input and exchange transaction data over these systems are scheduled to be conducted in February, May and June.

A year-2000 panel will also be established, to bring together the heads of various BOJ departments to monitor test results and draw up crisis-prevention plans.

Some insiders say that BOJ-NET and Zengin Data Telecommunication System, an interbank online system handling domestic-fund transfers, are ready to go. Responsibility now falls on individual financial institutions, they say, to ratchet up progress on their internal year-2000 problems.

(The Nikkei Financial Daily Wednesday edition)

Two recent threads here address the situation in Japan: Learn To Speak Japanese and NIKKEI NET: Japan's Y2K Agenda, but this seemed to qualify as a separate thread. I expect PNG has seen Nikkei's Wednesday article already.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 29, 1999

Answers

This is good news if they're right (Keep in mind what "honesty" means in Japanese). This was the schedule for Fuji bank from PNG's site:

Fuji Bank has an IT staff of 4,000 people. The 8 different networks have established test periods as follows:

FORUM: December, 1998
CMS: January, 1999
ANSER: July, 1999
BANCS: April, 1999
BoJ: Dec, 1998-Feb, 1999
DATA: Dec, 1998-May,1999
CAFIS: May, 1999
SWIFT: Oct, 1999-Dec, 1999


-- a (a@a.a), January 29, 1999.

I just find it interesting that BOJ has done so much in such a short time. Go to the Nikkei Net link and check out their timetable in the url I posted in that thread. Also check out the language used in reporting the Dec 20 test results, url posted same thread.

The final quoted paragraph of Tom's post above is another version of the one we see here in US - "we are fine, but we worry about you", and we are saying this to make you work harder. Too much of the BOJ stuff sounds like the writings in the SEC or Fed pages, and the tests and results referred to there were the focus of highly controversial threads on csy2k.

btw, does anyone know what is going on here re banking and Fed testing schedules and results? Seems to me there was going to be a major year end test, but I haven't heard a thing about it - other than a rumor that two major banks bowed out of the test due to problems.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), January 29, 1999.