36) US/Japan Talks Become Heated Arguments
From the left, Atsuyoshi Ouchi, Senior Managing Director of NEC,
Shouichi Akazawa, Executive Vice President of Fujitsu,
and Toshihiko Kubo, Executive Vice President of Hitachi Ltd.,
the Japanese Representative.
In response to the article of "Fortune", the Japan Electronics and
Mechanical Industries Association (at the time, and now Japan Electronics
and Information Technology Association, JEITA) took actions such as sending
a protest letter, but in order to further persist in the Japanese side's argument,
they held the "Japan-U.S. Semiconductor seminar" in Palo Alto, a
part of Silicon Valley, On November 14th.
From the left, Atsuyoshi Ouchi, Senior Managing Director of NEC, Shouichi
Akazawa, Executive Vice President of Fujitsu, and Toshihiko Kubo, Executive
Vice President of Hitachi Ltd., were the Japanese representatives.
Kubo, the leader of the group, explained the position of Japan by starting
with a Japanese ancient saying, "To start one good thing, we need to
eliminate one harmful thing", but Robert Noyce of the US side replied
with Japanese “avalanches" - export offenses, imbalance of import tariffs,
excessive administrative guidance by the government, and subsidy systems.
These problems were singled out, and immediate improvement was demanded by
the US.
After returning to Japan, I met Ouchi, who said, "Even in the US the
Pentagon is providing them with huge amount of money, and yet they would argue
against the ULSI project subsidy in Japan. On the same single fact, if the national circumstances and the national character are different,
the views are so much different!”
(Provided by Ouchi)
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