The focus of these activities was a non-profit organization called TRON Association which acted as the communication hub for the parties concerned with the development of ITRON specification OS and its users in many fields including home electronics, smart house industry, etc.
[12] However, Scott Callon of Stanford University writes that the project ran into some issues, such as BTRON being incompatible with existing DOS-based PCs and software.
Because of these reasons, at the end of 1988 the Ministry of Education decided that it would not support the project unless BTRON was also made compatible with DOS.
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry had hoped to avoid supporting NEC's domination of the PC market with DOS.
[11][12] TRON was included along with rice, semiconductors, and telecommunications equipment in a list of items targeted by Super-301 (complete stop of import based on section 301 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988).
[11] In June the Japanese government expressed their regret at U.S. intervention but accepted this request not to make it standard in schools, thus ending the BTRON project.
[12] According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, in 1989 US officials feared that TRON could undercut American dominance in computers, but that in the end PC software and chips based on the TRON technology proved no match for Windows and Intel's processors as a global standard.
[14] Known for his off the cuff remarks, in 2004 governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara mentioned in his column post concerning international trade policy that TRON was dropped because Carla Anderson Hills had threatened Ryutaro Hashimoto over it.
The certified Milestone plaque is installed on the campus of the University of Tokyo, where Ken Sakamura, the leader of TRON Project, worked as a research assistant in 1984.