Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

日本曾试图为全球构建操作系统，却遭美国干预

There’s a version of computing history where the desktop OS that won wasn’t Windows. Not because the alternative was Unix-based or because Apple pulled off something different, but because an operating system designed at the University of Tokyo in 1984 was ambitious enough to try to replace the file system with a hypermedia document model, run on a custom Japanese CPU architecture, and encode 1.5 million characters, only to have a US trade report single it out as an unfair trade barrier in 1989. 在计算历史的某个版本中，最终胜出的桌面操作系统并非 Windows。这并非因为替代方案是基于 Unix 的，也不是因为苹果公司实现了什么不同凡响的成就，而是因为 1984 年在东京大学设计的一款操作系统雄心勃勃：它试图用超媒体文档模型取代文件系统，运行在定制的日本 CPU 架构上，并支持 150 万个字符的编码。然而，它却在 1989 年被美国的一份贸易报告点名，称其为不公平的贸易壁垒。

That project was TRON (The Real-time Operating system Nucleus), a real, government-backed Japanese computing initiative whose desktop variant, BTRON, was named in a US trade barrier report and effectively killed before it could reach schools nationwide. Meanwhile, its embedded counterpart, ITRON, quietly became one of the most deployed operating systems in history. 该项目名为 TRON（实时操作系统内核），这是一个由日本政府支持的真实计算计划。其桌面版本 BTRON 被列入美国的贸易壁垒报告，在尚未普及到全国学校之前就实际上被扼杀了。与此同时，其嵌入式版本 ITRON 却悄然成为了历史上部署最广泛的操作系统之一。

TRON’s history has since attracted some genuinely wild conspiracy theories, including one claiming that Japan Airlines Flight 123 was deliberately crashed in order to target the TRON developers on board, despite there being no evidence that any TRON developers were even on the flight. But the strangest part of the story isn’t even a conspiracy theory: BTRON’s hypermedia desktop was decades ahead of what the market could support, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son may have helped sink it from the inside. 此后，TRON 的历史引发了一些极其离奇的阴谋论，其中包括声称日本航空 123 号班机是被人为蓄意坠毁，目的是针对机上的 TRON 开发人员——尽管没有任何证据表明当时有任何 TRON 开发人员在那架飞机上。但这个故事最奇怪的部分甚至不是阴谋论：BTRON 的超媒体桌面比当时市场所能支持的技术领先了数十年，而且软银创始人孙正义可能在内部推波助澜，导致了它的覆灭。

Ken Sakamura designed an OS family for the whole of Japanese society

坂村健为整个日本社会设计了一个操作系统家族

He wanted all of it, silicon included. Ken Sakamura was a researcher at the University of Tokyo when he launched the TRON Project in 1984. It was an ambitious undertaking; he wanted a vertically integrated computing architecture that Japan could build its entire digital infrastructure on, from the microcontroller in a washing machine to the workstation on a desk to the telecom switch in a central office. 他想要掌控一切，包括芯片。1984 年，当坂村健启动 TRON 项目时，他还是东京大学的一名研究员。这是一个雄心勃勃的计划；他希望构建一个垂直整合的计算架构，让日本能够以此为基础建立整个数字基础设施，从洗衣机里的微控制器，到桌面上的工作站，再到中心局的电信交换机，无所不包。

The project had five sub-architectures: ITRON for embedded real-time systems, BTRON for personal computers, CTRON for mainframes and telecom switching, MTRON for cross-system coordination, and STRON, a hardware implementation of the real-time kernel. The project designed its own CPU architecture, the TRON VLSI CPU, which Hitachi manufactured as the Gmicro/200 series. Hitachi actually produced and sold it, and it ended up powering some Japanese workstations and embedded systems throughout the late 1980s. 该项目包含五个子架构：用于嵌入式实时系统的 ITRON、用于个人电脑的 BTRON、用于大型机和电信交换的 CTRON、用于跨系统协调的 MTRON，以及作为实时内核硬件实现的 STRON。该项目设计了自己的 CPU 架构——TRON VLSI CPU，由日立公司制造并命名为 Gmicro/200 系列。日立确实生产并销售了该产品，它最终在 20 世纪 80 年代末为一些日本工作站和嵌入式系统提供了动力。

Sakamura’s team also drew up its own TRON keyboard layout, designed for efficient Japanese text input alongside programming symbols, and a real-time peripheral bus called micro-BTRON, based on IEEE 802.5 and intended as an alternative to MIDI for connecting “electronic stationery” peripherals, though that bus never shipped in a commercial product. 坂村的团队还设计了自己的 TRON 键盘布局，旨在实现高效的日语文本输入和编程符号输入；他们还设计了一种名为 micro-BTRON 的实时外设总线，基于 IEEE 802.5 标准，旨在作为 MIDI 的替代方案，用于连接“电子文具”外设，尽管该总线从未在商业产品中发布。

The idea was that every layer, from silicon to user interface, would be designed together, with no compatibility debt to existing platforms. The character encoding system, TRON Code, was arguably the most ambitious part. It supported multi-plane character switching via 0xFE escape codes, with 31 defined planes of 48,400 characters each, giving a theoretical capacity of 1,500,400 characters. 其理念是每一层——从芯片到用户界面——都应协同设计，且不背负任何对现有平台的兼容性债务。字符编码系统“TRON Code”可以说是其中最雄心勃勃的部分。它通过 0xFE 转义码支持多平面字符切换，定义了 31 个平面，每个平面包含 48,400 个字符，理论容量高达 1,500,400 个字符。

By 1999, B-right/V R2 shipped with roughly 130,000 characters across 14 defined planes, covering JIS levels 1 and 2, Chinese GB 2312, Korean KS C 5601, Unicode’s non-CJK range, and the Mojikyo collection of rare historical characters, and users could register new characters for free through the TRON Character Resource Center. 到 1999 年，B-right/V R2 发布时，已包含跨 14 个平面的约 13 万个字符，涵盖了 JIS 1 级和 2 级标准、中文 GB 2312、韩文 KS C 5601、Unicode 的非 CJK 范围，以及“文字镜”（Mojikyo）珍稀历史字符集。用户还可以通过 TRON 字符资源中心免费注册新字符。

To put that in perspective, Unicode 1.0 in 1991 defined 20,902 unified CJK ideographs, and TRON’s CJK coverage exceeded Unicode’s for well over a decade. A large part of that count came from Mojikyo, though, which separately encodes variant glyphs that Unicode unifies into single code points. 为了对比，1991 年的 Unicode 1.0 仅定义了 20,902 个统一 CJK 表意文字，而 TRON 的 CJK 覆盖范围在长达十多年的时间里都超过了 Unicode。不过，其中很大一部分字符来自“文字镜”，它将 Unicode 合并为单一码位的异体字进行了单独编码。

BTRON’s desktop was decades ahead of where computing actually went

BTRON 的桌面系统比实际的计算发展领先了数十年

BTRON’s core idea was that the user-visible primitive on a desktop computer shouldn’t be a file or the application, but the typed document part. In other words, a block of content with a stable identity and a declared type. Parts can contain other parts, and the same… BTRON 的核心理念是：桌面计算机上用户可见的基本单元不应该是“文件”或“应用程序”，而应该是“类型化文档部件”。换句话说，这是一个具有稳定标识和明确类型的块状内容。部件可以包含其他部件，并且相同的……