TL;DR

Even "American-made" products typically rely on Japanese materials and equipment somewhere upstream — most visibly in semiconductor materials and photoresists.

Hidden in Every Supply Chain

"Our products are American-made." That's what many startups believe. But trace the components, then trace the materials, and somewhere along your supply chain you will always end up in Japan. You're already dependent—you just haven't noticed.

The most striking example is semiconductors. Chips themselves may be fabricated in Taiwan or the U.S., but Japan holds roughly 48% of global share in the semiconductor materials essential to their production (1). In photoresists—the materials used to etch circuits—Japanese companies hold approximately 92% of the global market (1). In semiconductor manufacturing equipment, Japan holds roughly 31% global share, second only to the U.S. (1). In other words, every AI chip and sensor in the world passes through Japanese materials and equipment at the point of origin.

This goes well beyond semiconductors. Precision reducers for robot joints, motors controlling drone attitude, optical lenses for cameras and sensors—in each of these, Japanese companies hold high global market share. Whatever the nationality of the finished product, its most critical core is Japanese-made with surprising frequency.

The question this raises is serious. If your supply chain is supported by a small number of Japanese SMEs, and those companies' owners retire without successors, what happens? As noted earlier, 1.27 million companies currently have no identified successor (2). The invisible keystones of your supply network may be quietly disappearing.

If you're dependent, you need to know it—and secure it. The next article goes to the root of that dependency: the machines that make machines.

References:
(1) METI, Semiconductor & Digital Industry Strategy — https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/mono_info_service/joho/conference/semicon_digital.html
(2) SME Agency, 2025 SME White Paper — https://www.chusho.meti.go.jp/pamflet/hakusyo/2025/chusho/b1_1_9.html