Asia has been lagging behind Europe and the U.S. in the standardization of electrical technology, and the trend has been that Western countries have set the standards and Asian ones have followed.

But the appointment of Panasonic Corp. Corporate Advisor Junji Nomura as the International Electrotechnical Commission president in January and Tokyo's hosting of the 78th IEC General Meeting may signal a reversal of this trend.

The last Asians, also both Japanese, to hold the three-year term of the IEC presidency were Seiichi Takayanagi in 2002, and Noboru Takagi in 1977.