Technics SL-1210GAE Anniversary delivery .

None of us mentioned maybe the most obvious explanation for the delay at Sony Japan. A went a vaccine, It was and still is dangerous to force workers into a factory where close contact is unavoidable. For that reason, GM had to shut down several of their assembly lines, including manufacture of the new Corvette. Perhaps that affected Sony production as well.

In recent years, I’ve mostly received car parts, in large or small pkgs, shipped to my front door. Since they mostly come to me from the UK, the shipper is DHL. I neither love nor hate them. If I want something for my audio systems I tend to wait until we fly to Tokyo to visit our son. Then I can carry small items and LPs in my luggage.

I think Russia is a special case, and perhaps one should not generalize based on shipping to and from Russia.  For what it's worth, I have experienced no serious delays receiving small packages of capacitors and the like from Russia or Ukraine, purchased from eBay vendors, arriving in the US via USPS.  Moreover, when I have to ship from my location to anywhere else within the USA, my first choice by far is US Priority Mail.  I only use UPS or Fedex if the box is too big or too heavy for USPS.  And I have had only one problem, which was probably my fault, a capacitor came loose in a preamplifier that I had modified by installing physically large capacitors that weren't properly secured.
I am not sure what you meant to say, Luis, about accepting liability, but have you ever tried to collect for loss or damage, from UPS or Fedex?  I have, with zero responsiveness and no compensation for damage that was clearly due to mishandling.  Both companies are adept at pointing out packing errors, real or imagined, and they alone make the final decisions about compensation. (Not referring to the incident described above which occurred at the hands of USPS, was my fault, and was easily fixed by me at no cost except a little time.)

Oh please!  If there was a viable market in the US for hi-fi, there’d be distributors eager to import the products from japan. There isn’t a big market, so there aren’t distributors. We don’t even have brick and mortar audio stores any more. If you ever visit Tokyo, you’ll observe the huge contrast between their audio marketplace and ours. I’d wager that there are more audio salons in Akihabara, the electronics mecca of Tokyo, than there are in the entire USA. 
Chak, it may just be a difference of local tradition, but it is virtually unheard of for international purchases to arrive in the US via the local Postal Service. Now you mention it, the only exception to that rule that I have experienced is when I have ordered capacitors from Russia. So maybe you guys do things differently. Fedex, UPS, and DHL do a fine job. And I’m a big supporter of the USPS.

Luis, see my hypothesis above.

Chak, My research tells me that there is certainly commercial shipping between Japan and the USA, both by air and sea. That said, I could certainly imagine that there are delays due to COVID-19. But I don’t imagine there is complete interruption. It is more likely, to explain the delayed delivery of Technics turntables, that demand in Japan and locally in Asia is high enough such that those geographic regions are being given priority, maybe until production can catch up. The 1200 G series sells like hotcakes over the counter in major stores in Tokyo.