An NHK documentary in 2016 focused on Toshiba’s accounting scandal, but the real causes lay in massive losses in its nuclear and PC divisions.
This essay examines the suppression of Japan’s TRON OS, U.S. pressure, the rise of Windows, and the roles played by Bill Gates and Masayoshi Son in reshaping Japan’s electronics industry.

2016-09-19

A few days ago, NHK aired a special program on Toshiba.
Readers who watched this program must have realized once again the correctness of my arguments.
The program reported, in a casual narrative manner, on the circumstances that drove Toshiba into accounting fraud.
Those without discernment may not have understood it.
What truly drove Toshiba into a corner was the massive losses in its nuclear division and its personal computer division.
The huge deficits in the PC division are a phenomenon common to all Japanese electronics manufacturers once celebrated worldwide.
The cause lies entirely in events that occurred before Windows conquered the world.
I was the first to convey this fact to the world, and I have mentioned it repeatedly.
One of the geniuses produced by Japan, Ken Sakamura, who studied at Keio University, invented TRON, an operating system of exceptional quality for running computers.
The Japanese government decided to install TRON-based computers in elementary and junior high schools throughout Japan for educational purposes.
Mobile phones, digital cameras, car navigation systems.
There exists a basic operating system that runs many products in which Japan has led the world.
That system is TRON.
It is one of the most widely used operating systems in the world.
In 1984, TRON was devised by a single Japanese scholar.
That scholar was Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo.
Believing that “operating systems are the foundation of the information society, like air and water,” Sakamura released the TRON specifications free of charge to manufacturers worldwide.
Soon, 140 companies from Japan and abroad gathered to form a project.
However, in 1989, the superpower United States intervened.
Japan was pressured not to adopt TRON as the standard for computers used in elementary and junior high schools.
Before long, Windows came to dominate the global market.
With control over the heart of personal computers taken away, Japanese manufacturers saw their profit margins decline and were forced to recognize the weakness of lacking their own operating system.
At that time, Masayoshi Son acted as an advance guard for Bill Gates and relentlessly attacked officials at the Ministry of Education.
The phrase he uttered then was, “You don’t need two operating systems to run a computer.”
Considering the scale of cybercrime now occurring daily on Windows, it goes without saying how foolish that statement was.
To be continued.