In the beginning there were only a couple of Cray-1s installed in Japan, and until 1983 there were no Japanese-produced supercomputers. The first models were announced in 1983. Naturally there had been prototypes earlier (like the Fujitsu F230-75 APU produced in two copies in 1978) but Fujitsu's VP-200 and Hitachi's S-810 were the first officially announced versions. NEC announced its SX series slightly later.
The last decade has completely changed the scene. About three generations of machines have been produced by each of the domestic manufacturers and model improvements have also been offered during the life-span of those machines. During the last ten years about 300 supercomputer systems have been shipped and installed in Japan, and a whole infrastructure of supercomputing has been established. All major universities have supercomputers, many of the large industrial companies and research centres as well.