Here's the gist:
“Japan is no longer the star of chip-making, but it is the ‘water and air’ that keeps every fab alive—whoever controls the equipment and materials sets the rules, and that still means Tokyo.”
1. Bottom line first: Japan is not a “chip giant,” yet it is the bloodstream of the world’s wafer fabs.
In chip design and wafer foundry (think TSMC, Samsung) Japan isn't in charge anymore – they don't make as many or have the newest tech. But they're still big players in two important areas:
- Semiconductor equipment
- Semiconductor materials
Short version: the world’s fabs could keep the lights on without Japan, but they would slowly starve.
2. Where exactly is Japan unbeatable? (engineer-level breakdown)
2.1 Equipment – not ASML, but holding a stack of critical tools
Japanese vendors (Tokyo Electron, Hitachi High-Tech, SCREEN, etc.) own ~30 % of the global fab-equipment market, second only to the U.S. Look inside a typical line and you will meet:
- Coat/develop, wet clean, etch, CVD/ALD: TEL, SCREEN, Hitachi High-Tech
- Inspection & metrology: CD-SEM, defect review, X-ray—again Japanese boxes
Translation: most of the recipes you run are qualified on Japanese hardware. That gives Japan loud voice in tool roadmaps, process windows and yield ramps.
2.2 Materials – the real chokepoint
Japan controls roughly 50 % of the world’s semiconductor-materials market and dominates 14 of the 19 key classes:
- Silicon wafers (Shin-Etsu, SUMCO)
- Photoresist / BARC (JSR, TOK, Fujifilm)
- CMP slurry & pads (Fujimi, Hitachi Chemical)
- EMC, underfill, leadframes for packaging
- High-purity acids, solvents, gases
So every photon, every polishing pad, every wafer cassette you touch has probably crossed the Sea of Japan at least once.
3. What about “made-in-Japan” chips?
3.1 From king to niche
In the 1980s Japan held ~50 % of global semiconductor sales and crushed U.S. vendors in DRAM. Trade wars, DRAM price crashes, and slow conglomerate decisions later, it exited the memory race and lagged in advanced logic.
3.2 Where it still wins today
- Car MCUs, power devices, sensors (Renesas, ROHM)
- Industrial / very reliable analog stuff
- NAND flash (Kioxia)
Not 3 nm headlines, but AEC-Q100 Grade 0 and 30-year product lifecycles.
4. Why is everyone courting Japan again?
4.1 Geopolitics + supply-chain security
With >90 % of leading-edge logic sitting in Taiwan, the U.S., EU and allies need a “safe node.” Japan offers political stability, deep manufacturing roots and alignment on export controls. Carve up the map and Japan becomes the designated lifeboat.
4.2 Tokyo is writing checks
METI has earmarked > USD 20 bn since 2021:
Rapidus – trying to make 2 nm logic chips in Hokkaido with IBM's help, planning to start in 2027
- TSMC Kumamoto – giving big subsidies for making car and specialty chips
For engineers this means new fabs, new pilot lines, and a tight loop between tool/material vendors and the fab next door.
5. What does this mean to you as an engineer?
5.1 Process realization
Every OPC tweak, etch bias shift or CMP dishing fix ends with a Japanese AE sending you a new recipe. Joint-development projects with TEL, JSR or Shin-Etsu are daily life.
5.2 Supply-chain risk
Remember 2019: Japan restricted fluorinated polyimide, resist and HF to Korea—Samsung and SK hynix had <90 days of buffer. Dual-sourcing now starts with “can we get this outside Japan?”
5.3 Career & ecosystem
Japan is moving from “backstage supplier” to “front-row manufacturer + platform.” If you care about:
- Putting together processes for advanced chips or SiC/GaN power chips
- Engineering equipment with very precise control
- Doing research on materials where even tiny amounts of impurities matter
…then Japan offers fabs, vendors and a reliability culture that trains you to think in six-sigma by reflex.
6. Human-sentence summary
If the global semiconductor industry were a data-center:
- The USA designs the processors
- Taiwan & Korea run the servers
- Europe makes the optical switches
- Japan provides the power supplies, cables, screws, and coolant—you don't see them, but if you shut them off, the whole place goes down.
