The author probably knew that she was Japanese considering that he wrote the book about the subject matter, although the picture might have been captioned by some editor.

I'd suspect that it is the same image that appears on his book in chapter called "Controlling the Kanjisphere", so I guess it covers japanese typewriters:

https://books.google.com/books?id=UTIxDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA207&lpg=...