The main reason is the complexity of Japanese language, namely technical barriers that existed for text entry and displaying the characters on personnel compute

The main reason is the complexity of Japanese language, namely technical barriers that existed for text entry and displaying the characters on personnel computer in 80s-90s (http://blog.gatunka.com/2008/05/05/why-japan-didnt-create-the-ipod/ http://blog.gatunka.com/2008/05/05/why-japan-didnt-create-th...) Thus there is a strong culture of complex specialized gadgets and a weak general-purpose personal computer culture.