Japan holds dominant or near-exclusive global positions in numerous categories of advanced materials andmanufacturing technologies that are now prerequisites for semiconductor production, precision robotics, andadvanced weapons systems. These monopolies — including Ajinomoto Build-up Film (approximatelyninety-five percent of global semiconductor packaging substrate supply), Harmonic Drive Systems' strainwave gears (dominant in the high-precision actuator segment), and the EUV photoresist ecosystem(approximately ninety percent Japanese market share) — were not created by industrial policy, directedR co-evolutionary lock-inbetween suppliers and downstream customers accumulated over decades of joint technical development; andtacit process knowledge concentrated in specific production systems and individuals that cannot be fullytransferred through documentation or acquisition. The 2019 Japan–Korea semiconductor materials disputeprovides a natural experiment confirming the bound of directed substitution efforts — and simultaneouslyreveals that Japan presents no institutional resistance to knowledge transfer with allied partners, a policyresource that existing frameworks have not exploited.The aggregate of these monopolies constitutes what this paper terms material sovereignty — astructurally distinct basis for international order characterized by passivity, non-consumption, and thecomplete disjunction of strategic effect from actor intention. Japan's crisis of small and medium enterprisesuccession represents not a domestic economic challenge but the potential irreversible extinction of theknowledge base underlying Western alliance military-industrial capability: a security crisis misclassified byboth Japanese policymakers and Western defense analysts.
Ryuhei ISHIBASHI (Sun,) studied this question.