This essay presents historical facts surrounding the suppression of Japan’s TRON operating system, once poised to become a global standard, under U.S. political pressure. It delivers a factual rebuttal to anti-Japan narratives promoted by New York Times Tokyo bureau chief Martin Fackler and criticizes the ignorance of Japanese figures who uncritically adopt such views.

2016-05-21

They pressured Japan not to decide that the standard for computers used in elementary and junior high schools would be TRON.
What follows is the first installment in which I strike down with historical facts both Martin Fackler, the Tokyo bureau chief of The New York Times—who, unbelievably, spoke in the Nikkan Gendai of Japan as having “the worst one-party dictatorship ever seen among democratic nations,” revealing an unforgivable level of ignorant arrogance and a lack of study so extreme that he does not even realize the foolishness of judging Japan through the Asahi Shimbun—and The New York Times itself, which continues to publish anti-Japan articles with a level of intellect equal to his.
At the same time, this is also an essay that rebukes Sonzaki, a former official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—a third-rate Kasumigaseki bureaucracy that, unlike the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, did nothing after the war to make Japan larger or stronger—who coauthored a book with this Fackler, telling him to study the history of Japan before presuming to speak authoritatively.
Edited by: NHK “Project X” Production Team, NHK Publishing, Release Date: 2005/02/04
In the text, boldface is by Akutagawa.
Mobile phones, digital cameras, car navigation systems. There exists a basic operating system that drives many products in which Japan leads the world. TRON. It is one of the most widely used basic operating systems in the world.
In 1984, TRON was devised by a single Japanese scholar: Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo. He designed it to run everything from personal computers to home appliances. Believing that “a basic operating system is the foundation of an information society, like air and water,” Sakamura astonishingly released the TRON specifications free of charge to manufacturers worldwide. In no time, 140 companies from Japan and abroad gathered to form a project. Major manufacturers successively produced prototype computers running TRON. Its ease of use and smooth operation earned high praise.
However, in 1989, a superpower—the United States—stood in the way. It pressured Japan not to decide that the standard for computers used in elementary and junior high schools would be TRON. Having been overwhelmed by Japan in automobiles and VTRs and burdened with massive trade deficits, the United States hinted at sanctions such as import restrictions and retaliatory tariffs. Manufacturers were forced one after another to withdraw from TRON computers. Soon, the operating system that dominated the world market was Windows. With the core of personal computers controlled by others, Japanese manufacturers saw their profit margins decline and were made keenly aware of the weakness of lacking their own basic operating system.
The TRON project was driven into a corner. Yet Sakamura and the engineers did not give up. Declaring that “manufacturing requires a proprietary basic operating system that can be freely improved,” they appealed to engineers across the country and repeatedly upgraded TRON. Amid adversity, the passion of the members who continued to fight for the future of manufacturing in a technology-based nation drew them into a fateful encounter with a revolutionary new product.
TRON, a globally significant basic operating system originating in Japan. This depicts the dramatic reversal born of the relentless determination of the men who nurtured it.