Two Tokyo Olympics Show the Long Arc of Japan's Tech Decline

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Isabel Reynolds and Pavel Alpeyev, Two Tokyo Olympics Show the Long Arc of Japan's Tech Decline; Suga's government is vying to recapture some of its lost chip industry verve as the world is increasingly defined by technology.. Bloomberg, July 19, 2021 (updated in July 20; under the heading "Politics")
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... ip-fightback-begins

Note:
(a) "innovations such as Sony Corp's videocassette recorder, Toshiba Corp flash memory * * * made Japan synonymous with global technological superiority * * *  Japan can claim credit for the Walkman [1979-2010] * * * Kazumi Nishikawa [西川 和見], a director at the IT division [情報産業課長] of the all-encompassing Ministry of Economy, Industry and Trade [経済産業省], known as METI. * * * 'Some countries are offering support on a different order of magnitude,' making it hard to compete, said Akira Amari [甘利 明: 衆議院議員 + 自由民主党税制調査会長], tax chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and a former minister of state for economic and fiscal policy."
(i)
(A) videocassette recorder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocassette_recorder
(section 1 History, section 1.1 Early machines and formats, section 1.1.2 Sony U-matic [format]: "But the high cost - US$1,395 in 1971 for a combination TV/VCR, equivalent to $8,850 in 2020 dollars – kept it out of most homes"/ section 1.2 Mass-market success[:] VCR started gaining mass market traction in 1975. Six major firms were involved in the development of the VCR: RCA, JVC, AMPEX [based in US], Matsushita Electric / Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba")
(B) Sony's VCR format Betamax lost out to JVC's VHS.
(ii) "Flash memory * * * was invented at Toshiba in 1980 [by Fujio MASUOKA 舛岡 富士雄] * * * Toshiba began marketing flash memory in 1987."  en.wikipedia.org for "flash memory."

in both Japanese and Chinese, 舛 is
Radical 136
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_136
(section 2 Derived characters)


(b) "Tetsuro Higashi, chairman emeritus at semiconductor equipment maker Tokyo Electron Ltd, said the task of addressing Japan's decline is not as straightforward as rebuilding one industry. He cited Japan's semiconductor strengths as Kioxia for memory and Sony's image sensors, along with component and power-chip makers"
(i) Tetsu-rō HIGASHI  東 哲郎  (The kanji 東 has Chinese pronunciation tō (as in Tokyo) and Japanese pronunciation "higashi.")
(ii) Tokyo Electron Ltd  東京エレクトロン株式会社
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Electron
(TEL; "1963, Tokyo Electron Laboratories Incorporated [株式会社東京エレクトロン研究所] was founded [in Tokyo and remains there] by Tokuo KUBO [久保 徳雄] and Toshio KODAKA [小高 敏夫 (as you can see, 雄, 夫, 男 in male given name are all pronounced 'o'], largely funded by Tokyo Broadcasting System[, Inc 株式会社東京放送 (1960-2009), which in 2009 changed its name to Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings, Inc and has always been a civilian, nongovernmental company] (TBS), with a capital of over five million yen. Later that year, their office opened in the TBS main building")

エレクトロン is katakana that pronounces "e-re-ku-to-ron." Recall that 五十音 has R but not L.
(iii) Kioxia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kioxia  
("was spun off from the Toshiba conglomerate as Toshiba Memory Corporation 東芝メモリ株式会社 * * * [section 1 Name:] Kioxia is a combination of the Japanese word kioku meaning memory and the Greek word axia meaning value")
(A) Japanese-English dictionary:
* ki-oku 記憶 【きおく】 (n,v): "memory; recollection"  (The "oku" is Chinese pronunciation of kanji 憶.")
* zero-sen 零戦; ゼロ戦 【ゼロせん】 (n): "(See 零式艦上戦闘機) Zero fighter plane"
(B) Modern Greek-English dictionary:
* αξία (noun feminine; Romanization: axía; same spelling as in Ancient Greek): "value"  
(In Modern Greek alphabet, Ε ε is pronounced epsilon (equivalent to e in English) whereas Ξ ξ, pronounced as xi (where x is pronounced as ks) and equivalent to x in English.)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/αξία
* ελπίδα (noun feminine; Romanization: elpida; from Ancient Greek noun feminine ἐλπίς (Romanization: elpís) hope): "hope"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ελπίδα


(c) "Berlin-based think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung * * * SNV researchers Jan-Peter Kleinhans and Julia Hess"
(i) German-English dictionary:
* Stiftung (non feminine; from verb stiffen donate): "(charity) foundation"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Stiftung
* Verantwortung (noun feminine): "responsibility"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Verantwortung
(ii) Jan (name)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_(name)

That is for male given name. As female given name or a short form of it (you see it occasionally in US), it is short for Janet.


(d) "In a devastating presentation to the lower house [the full name includes Education, Culture, Sports,] Science and Technology Committee [衆議院 文部科学委員会, corresponding to 文部科学省 in Japan's cabinet] last month, independent consultant Takashi Yunogami laid bare Japan's failings. * * * In 1999, Tokyo encouraged the merger of Hitachi and NEC's memory businesses under the name Elpida, the Greek for 'hope.' * * * 'All sorts of things were tried to stop the downward trend — national projects, consortiums, joint ventures — all failed,' Yunogami told lawmakers. * * * Yuko Harayama, executive director at Riken [理研, short for 国立研究開発法人 理化学研究所 (1917- ; 5 campuses)], a research institution * * * Some 40 years ago, spooked by Japan's rise, the US imposed a requirement to use a certain percentage of US chips or face trade tariffs. * * * downfall of Docomo, the first company to connect mobile phones to the internet. It lost out to Samsung and Apple."
(i) Takashi YU-NO-GAMI  湯之上 隆

A journalist on fall and decline of Japan's manufacturing in hi-tech, he writes books (日本型モノづくりの敗北; 零戦・半導体・テレビ. 文艺春秋 (文春 for short), 2013.

零戦 is defined in (b)(iii)(A).
(ii) The word "elpida" is defined in (b)(iii)(B).
(iii) English dictionary:
* consortium (n; from Latin [adjective (masculine, feminine and neuter all with same spelling)] consors [shared, common: Wiktionary])
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/consortium
has as plural either consortia or consortiums -- the former is Latin plural and the latter, English plural.
(iv) "Yuko Harayama, executive director at Riken"
(A) Yūko HARAYAMA  原山 優子
(B) Riken's board is composed of executive directors 理事 headed by president 理事長 (松本 紘 Hiroshi MATSUMOTO). See Management and Governance. Riken, undated
https://www.riken.jp/en/about/management/

Compare executive director
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_director
("Confusion can arise")
(v) "US imposed a requirement to use a certain percentage of US chips or face trade tariffs"

I can not find anything in the Web that said so. From the context, the quotation seems to say that electronic products such as personal computers must have a certain percentage of American-made chips. What kind of chips? Japanese excelled at memory chips only and Intel shifted from memory chips (money loser) to logic chips which Intel has dominated ever since). Besides, US did not seem to import many computers in 1980s, with many computer makers of its own.
(vi)
(A) NTT Docomo  株式会社NTTドコモ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTT_Docomo  
(1991- ; based in Tokyo; is the predominant mobile phone operator in Japan; "Docomo had been spun off from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) in August 1991 to take over the mobile cellular operations, although the parent company had the majority stake until the re-privatization in 2020")
is still operating as both a carrier and a seller of its branded smartphones.
(B) History. NTT docomo, undated
https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/engl ... /history/index.html
(table: "February 1999  Launches i-mode as world's first mobile Internet-services platform")

"These [mobile multimedia services] include i-mode [Docomo still operates i-mode] which provides e-mail and internet access to over 50 million subscribers * * *."  en.wikipedia.org for "NTT Docomo."