This news is quite lamentable.

According to Japanese media reports: Starting from this month, Toshiba, Japan's largest electrical company, has officially declared bankruptcy; at the same time, it will be gobbled up by a Japanese industrial alliance (JIP) composed of more than 20 companies, which will merge and acquire different businesses under Toshiba.

It is really unexpected to see such a super financial conglomerate end up like this. The downfall of Toshiba is almost a microcosm of the decline of Japanese manufacturing over the past thirty years.

We need to understand that Toshiba's most glorious period was in the 1980s of the last century. At that time, Toshiba, whether in cutting-edge products such as semiconductors, nuclear power equipment, and precision machine tools, or in ordinary consumer goods such as white appliances and elevators, was sweeping the world.

Especially in high-end storage chips (DRAM memory + hard disk drives), it once captured 80% of the global market share, forcing Intel to retreat and close its DRAM factories, transforming to focus on CPUs.

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In 1987, Toshiba even invented the world's first NAND flash memory chip, which was a sensation at the time.

However, Toshiba's glory did not continue into the 1990s.

On the one hand, the United States fiercely suppressed the Japanese semiconductor industry, leading to the rapid collapse of Toshiba's core profit business - storage chips - in the global market.On the other hand, Toshiba hesitated to heavily invest in the research and development of NAND flash memory chips, preferring to stick with old-fashioned mechanical hard drives to make quick money. Advancing the technological iteration of NAND chips is costly and labor-intensive, with no immediate financial returns, and Toshiba lacked the motivation to do so.

However, if Toshiba was unwilling to heavily invest in the technological iteration of NAND chips, there were others who were. In the 1990s, after obtaining a technology license for Toshiba's NAND chips, Samsung of South Korea put all its resources into the NAND chip business.

After several years of development, Samsung surpassed Toshiba in technology and no longer relied on Toshiba's technology licenses. At the same time, in the late 1990s, when NAND chips became the mainstream storage chips for electronic products, Samsung became the biggest winner, reaping substantial benefits.

Meanwhile, Toshiba, which had relied on mechanical hard drives for quick profits, rapidly lost a large market share and began to decline.

It's ironic that Toshiba, the inventor of NAND flash memory chips, ended up being outpaced by the South Koreans in capturing the global expansion benefits of NAND chips. It's enough to make one want to take a hammer to Toshiba's stubborn mindset focused solely on quick profits.

However, Toshiba's stubborn mindset might not even be awakened by a hammer. Because, in addition to NAND chips, Toshiba made the same mistake in the fields of power equipment, machine tools, home appliances, and other business areas: clinging to old technologies to make quick money, which ultimately led to the continuous erosion of its global market share by China and South Korea.

When Japanese media report on Toshiba's bankruptcy, they always emphasize the superficial reason: the blind acquisition of the heavily loss-making Westinghouse Electric, which burdened Toshiba with a heavy debt, leading it down the path of no return.

But little do they know that Toshiba's stagnation in technological research and development, and its obsession with making quick money, were the core reasons for its bankruptcy. For a company, being in debt is not a problem; but for a company that can no longer continue to make money, that's when real problems arise.

What's even more shocking is that Toshiba's "unwillingness to heavily invest in the development of new technologies and clinging to old technologies for quick profits" is a widespread issue throughout the Japanese manufacturing industry.In 1997, Japan's Pioneer Corporation was the first to commercialize OLED technology in automobiles, setting a precedent for the era. However, more than 20 years have passed, and today it is the Koreans and Chinese who dominate the global OLED market, while Japanese OLED companies are on the brink of bankruptcy.

Why is that? Simply because: the future of OLED was uncertain, and Japanese companies were unwilling to invest heavily in research and development; whereas the old LCD technology could generate profits with little effort.

Similarly, in 1996, Nissan mass-produced the world's first electric vehicle, the Prairie Joy. But more than 20 years have passed, and today it is China, the United States, and Europe that dominate the global electric vehicle market, while Japanese automakers have become laggards.

The reason is the same: advancing electric vehicle technology is time-consuming and labor-intensive; the sales prospects for electric vehicles are turbulent and unpredictable; it is more comfortable to earn quick money from fuel-powered cars rather than taking risks.

The so-called Japanese craftsmanship spirit is nothing more than a deterioration after the shortcut has been blocked. Since there is no way to achieve a breakthrough in a short period, I give up on the idea of innovation; then I cling to the old technology until the end.

Look at how Japanese companies in the fields of automobiles, semiconductors, electrical equipment, and displays are clinging to the past; isn't this the mindset?

Therefore, the decline of Japanese manufacturing over the past thirty years has been attributed by some to American suppression and by others to the rise of China and South Korea; but I believe that Japan's narrow-minded national character and limited perspective are more fundamental reasons.

As a saying in dialectics goes: external factors are the conditions for change, while internal factors are the basis for change, and external factors act through internal factors. An increase in temperature can hatch a chick from an egg, but an increase in temperature cannot hatch a chick from a stone.

The decline of Japanese manufacturing over thirty years, the Japanese themselves must bear the main responsibility; Japan's national character is the more fundamental internal cause.