Media Bio

Bradley L. Bartz is an American entrepreneur who helped build early Internet publishing and access in Japan in the 1990s and now runs Japan.co.jp as a primary-source archive and narrative history of that era.

Bradley L. Bartz is an American entrepreneur known for early Internet work in Japan during the 1990s, spanning BBS publishing, offline search distribution (Metabook), and ISP-era partnerships. He now operates Japan.co.jp as a primary-source archive and story-driven history documenting the early Internet in Japan and the unusual question it raises: “How did a gaijin end up owning Japan.co.jp?”

Bradley L. Bartz is an American entrepreneur who worked in Japan during the formative years of consumer Internet adoption. Beginning in the early 1990s, his projects spanned BBS-era publishing, searchable “Metabooks” distributed on floppy disks, and later ISP-era partnerships as Japan transitioned toward PPP-based Internet access. His teams served business and expat communities and worked with multiple publishers and organizations to distribute and organize information at a time when search and connectivity were not yet ubiquitous. Today, Bartz maintains Japan.co.jp as a primary-source archive and narrative history of the era—built to be revisited over time. The site links artifacts, press clips, and a timeline to a long-form story about entrepreneurship, gatekeepers, and resilience in the first Internet wave.

Bradley L. Bartz is an American entrepreneur whose career intersects with several major “first wave” Internet transitions. In Japan in the early 1990s, his work focused on information distribution and search before the modern web became mainstream—spanning BBS-era publishing, natural-language search experimentation, and “Metabook” packages that delivered searchable content on floppy disks. As connectivity expanded, his focus moved toward ISP-era infrastructure and partnerships, helping businesses and communities shift from dial-up/BBS workflows to PPP Internet access. After later chapters—rapid growth, setbacks, and rebuilding—Bartz returned to his domain portfolio in the AI era with a new toolset: small teams can now publish and structure knowledge at scale. Japan.co.jp is his flagship historical project, designed as a primary-source archive and a binge-readable narrative that explains the question many readers ask immediately: “How did a gaijin get to own Japan.co.jp?”