The Japan That Can Say No; Ironning of...

Alternate title: "The Japan That Can Say Hello"

Brace yourselves, this is gonna get worst before getting worst!


In 1989 there was an interesting book "The Japan That Can Say No" co-written by Akio Morita Shintaro Ishihara.

You can buy the book from Amazon, but I didn't knowing that it'll only piss me off and I'll end up tearing it apart. The full text of the book is also available here.

The book argues about how Japan can use its technological supremcy to pressure America into becoming its bitch. No, I'm not joking! Go ahead and read the book!
It also says that Americans are fat, stupid lazy and racist. At least it got something right ^_^

It goes on and on about the Japanese spirit, and how the Japanese are forward looking. Chapter 2 of the book is all "Japanese look 10 years ahead while Americans only look 10 minutes ahead" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over!

20 years later the book is funny. There is so much to laugh about in retrospective.
* The burst of the Japanese bubble economy by the beginning of the 1990s.
* The 10 year recession that followed.
* The rise of the Internet and how American companies capatilized on that while the Japanse missed the boat.

* The rise of FOSS
* And best bit is what this thread is about...

One of the arguments in the book is that Japan should use its semiconductor supremacy to pressure the USofA.

Quote 1 about Japanese semiconductors supremecy:

Quote:

If, for example, Japan sold chips to the Soviet Union and stopped selling them to the U.S., this would upset the entire military balance. Some Americans say that if Japan were thinking of doing that, it would be occupied. Certainly, this is an age where things could come to that. The more technology advances, the more the U.S. and the Soviet Union will become dependent upon the initiative of the Japanese people -- this is getting crazy now, but the point is clear.

Quote 2 about Japanese semiconductors supremecy:

Quote:

The 1 megabit semiconductors which are used in the hearts of computers, which carry hundreds of millions of circuits in an area which is one-third the size of your little fingernail, are only made in Japan. Japan has nearly a 100 percent share of these 1 megabit semiconductors.

1 megabit! LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
Does he realize how outdated 1 megabit was! Even in 1989!

Quote 3 about Japanese semiconductors supremecy:

Quote:

America went after cheap labor and set up factories in Southeast Asia, where they could make 256k chips (1/4 the capacity of 1 megabit chips), but they could not catch Japan. Now, Japan is at least 5 years ahead of the U.S. in this area and the gap is widening. There is even some kinds of basic research which cannot be accomplished without using one of these advanced computers. It take excellent computers in order to develop other advanced computers -- it is a cycle of technology. In other words, the bigger the gap in advanced computer technology, the more difficult it is to catch up.

5 years ahead? I thought it was 10 years! Not that it ever was true!
Does this guy research anything?!

It seems they only looked 2 years ahead instead of 20.

In 1989 when the book was written and at the height of the Japanese bubble, things were like this:

NEC Semiconductors         Japan
Toshiba Semiconductors     Japan
Hitachi Semiconductors     Japan
Motorola Semiconductors    USA
Texas Instruments          USA
Fujitsu Semiconductors     Japan
Mitsubishi Semiconductors  Japan
Intel Corporation          USA
Matsushita Semiconductors  Japan
Philips Semiconductors     Netherlands
National Semiconductor     USA
SGS-Thomson                France-Italy
Samsung Semiconductors     South Korea
Sanyo Semiconductors       Japan
Siemens Semiconductors     Germany
Sharp Semiconductors       Japan
AMD                        USA
OKI Semiconductors         Japan
Sony Semiconductors        Japan
Harris Semiconductor       USA

In 1992 something interesting happened, a Japanese company is no longer the world leader!

Intel Corporation          USA
NEC Semiconductors         Japan
Toshiba Semiconductors     Japan
Motorola Semiconductors    USA
Hitachi Semiconductors     Japan
Texas Instruments          USA
Fujitsu Semiconductors     Japan
Mitsubishi Semiconductors  Japan
Philips Semiconductors     Netherlands
Matsushita Semiconductors  Japan
Samsung Semiconductors     South Korea
National Semiconductor     USA
SGS-Thomson                France-Italy
AMD                        USA
Sanyo Semiconductors       Japan
Sharp Semiconductors       Japan
Siemens Semiconductors     Germany
Sony Semiconductors        Japan
OKI Semiconductors         Japan
AT&T Semiconductors        USA

And in 2008, while still relevant, the Japanese semiconductors industry in not any more dominatiing than the USofAian or S.Korean.

Intel Corporation         USA
Samsung Electronics       South Korea
Toshiba Semiconductors    Japan
Texas Instruments         USA
STMicroelectronics        France-Italy
Renesas Technology        Japan
Sony                      Japan
Qualcomm                  USA
Hynix                     South Korea
Infineon Technologies     Germany
NEC Semiconductors        Japan
AMD                       USA
Freescale Semiconductor   USA
Broadcom                  USA
Panasonic Corporation     Japan
Micron Technology         USA
NXP                       Netherlands
Sharp Electronics         Japan
Elpida Memory             Japan
Rohm                      Japan
NVIDIA                    USA
Marvell Technology Group  USA
MediaTek                  Taiwan
Fujitsu Microelectronics  Japan
Analog Devices            USA

Akio Morita claims that America is dependent on Japanese computers (software/hardware).

Quote:

Computer terminals are in short supply and are being rapidly developed in Japan. Japan should let America know what the situation is and make the U.S. realize that the relationship between the two nations is increasingly mutually dependent.

Last time I checked it's the other way around. Morita died in 1999, but even so, I'm sure he saw first hand how the American computer industry flattened its Japanese rival in the 1990s.*
No one said it better than Steve Jobs: "The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They're just like dead fish washing up on the shores."

Though he is right on this:

Quote:

Therefore, the only thing that Americans or Europeans can do to correct this imbalance is reassess themselves and make an effort to produce products which are attractive to Japanese consumers. It is in this area where I would like to see Japanese politicians get courage enough to expound abroad to our trading partners.

American products have sucked for too long!

Ishiara brags about other things like Japan's highspeed rail, while neglecting to mention that it didn't turn a profit and incurred heavy debts until it was privatized. (src)


And how Japanese rice cooker CPUs are better than x86s, 68Ks, etc... He didn't really say it like that, but here's what he said:

Quote:

This dependence on the market for supporting mass production can be seen in that America did not have the vast and diverse needs for semiconductors, as Japan did in rice cookers and other household appliances. In Japan, these sizable and diverse needs created the market for semiconductor production.

Then there is Ishihara is so delusional**, he should try landing a job at Fox News American jets still use American CPUs, America is dependent on no one, except maybe Freescale POWER CPUs for the F-35 JSF.

One major historical fallacy is:

Quote:

During the Second World War, Americans bombed civilian targets in Germany, but only on Japan did they use the atomic bomb. While they refuse to admit it, the only reason they could use the atomic bomb on Japan was because of their racial attitude toward Japan. The fact that they actually dropped the atomic bomb on Japan is sufficient indication that racial prejudice was a factor.

What an idiot! The bomb was only completed 2 months after Germany surrendered! We would have gladly nuked Germany!


Another delusion is that Japan is a world leader in the (non-existent) 5th generation computers and it can, again, use it to pressure the USofA.

Quote:

At the present time, Soviet technology allows these missiles to hit within a 60 meter accuracy, while for the U.S., it is 15 meters, and there is concern that this 15 meters has to be brought down to zero. This type of precision calls for a more complex orbit the further the attack proceeds, and only artificial intelligence can ensure accuracy. It may well be that America was the 4th generation leader and that the 1 megabit and several megabit devices which will support the next, the 5th generation, can be developed by American know-how. However, to use this know-how across diverse applications, including weapons, requires a country with dramatically advanced production management; it is only Japan that can deliver on it.

For those who don't know, 5th generation computers was Japan's idea of one leaping the world.
From Wikipedia:

Quote:

The Fifth Generation Computer Systems project (FGCS) was an initiative by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, begun in 1982, to create a "fifth generation computer" (see history of computing hardware) which was supposed to perform much calculation using massive parallel processing. It was to be the end result of a massive government/industry research project in Japan during the 1980s. It aimed to create an "epoch-making computer" with supercomputer-like performance and usable artificial intelligence capabilities. Failure The FGCS Project did not meet with commercial success for reasons similar to the Lisp machine companies and Thinking Machines. The highly parallel computer architecture was eventually surpassed in speed by less specialized hardware (for example, Sun workstations and Intel x86 machines). The project did produce a new generation of promising Japanese researchers. But after the FGCS Project, MITI stopped funding large-scale computer research projects, and the research momentum developed by the FGCS Project dissipated. It should be noted, however, that MITI/ICOT embarked on a Sixth Generation Project in the 1990s.

Sometimes he is being so ridicolus it isn't even funny, here he accuses the people of Japan of evolving into E.T. like creatures. I don't know what that's even supposed to mean! Did he hate everyone including the Japanese?

Quote:

When looking at the actions of the Japanese people these days, I recall that these seem similar to ET, the extra-terrestrial, in the Speilburg films. I feel that it may well be the Japanese people will evolve into something like ET with pronounced eyes and noses and a big head making them top-heavy, over an abnormally thin body and slender arms and legs.

What followed in the 1990s was hugely worlds apart in the USofA and Japan. Japan bubble market collpased and went thru a 10 year recession, while the USofA saw the growth of a new industry based on the Internet, of which Google and Amazon are clear examples of.


Since I'm a gaming fan, I found the fact that the PS3 uses a CPU, GPU and RAM by American companies, extremely ironic, especially when you consider that Akio Morita is Sony's co-founder. Too bad Morita didn't live to see it happen! I would have traded the world for a chance of going to Japan and LOLing at him and Ishihara!
"You two said what?! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The only constant is change, and this is more true in the world of technology. No one is entitled to the future and the future waits for no one! No one can predict the future, not even Morita with has 10-year vision. Maybe in the future the Dutch will dominate, no one knows! Earth is hot, flat and crowded!

Editor's note(s):
(1) I love Japan, I was in fact listening to J-Pop while writing this piece. It just that is pisses me off (a little) the Anti-Americanism in the book, and since hindsight is 20/20 I can laugh all I want about visions and predictions that didn't come true.

(2) Ishihara is no more of an idiot than the right-wing extremists here in the USofA.

* Computers made by Toshiba, Sony, etc.. now are nothing but shells that contain CPUs, GPUs and software from American companies. Unlike how it was in the 1980s and 1990s when the Japanese had their own independent designs.
** He surprisingly exceeds me in delusion and truthiness.