>Japan stopped being relevant predominantly because the US diplomatically bullied Japan into making itself irrelevant.
No, Japan stopped being relevant because Japanese companies are legendary in their hostility towards each other. They themselves are their worst enemy. Not to mention Japanese society is more interested in looking in the mirror than out the window.
In fact, it's not even the US who really drove Japan into irrelevancy, it's South Korea, China, and Taiwan. All countries whose companies spent more time taking on the global market instead of squabbling amongst themselves and thus succeeded at out-Japan'ing Japan as a mere stepping stone.
Samsung, LG, and Foxconn killed off NEC, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Sanyo, and Elpida. Huawei and such cleaned up what remained. Renesas is basically on legacy life support, and who knows if Rapidus won't be stillborn.
The US dominance that is Apple and Google is a result of Japan loving to hoist petards, not because the US has power and has no qualms about using it legally or otherwise.
No, Japan stopped being relevant because Japanese companies are legendary in their hostility towards each other. They themselves are their worst enemy. Not to mention Japanese society is more interested in looking in the mirror than out the window.
In fact, it's not even the US who really drove Japan into irrelevancy, it's South Korea, China, and Taiwan. All countries whose companies spent more time taking on the global market instead of squabbling amongst themselves and thus succeeded at out-Japan'ing Japan as a mere stepping stone.
Samsung, LG, and Foxconn killed off NEC, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Sanyo, and Elpida. Huawei and such cleaned up what remained. Renesas is basically on legacy life support, and who knows if Rapidus won't be stillborn.
The US dominance that is Apple and Google is a result of Japan loving to hoist petards, not because the US has power and has no qualms about using it legally or otherwise.