Good luck finding it, before the redesign the news archive had a link to it, but digging through the forums would be quite boring.
That is why I am dissapointed in the redesign, their forum members have contributed so much to Shenmue Database, yet the main articles haven't added any of the information in.
But here's the jist of it the developer discusses the lack of involvement of Yu Suzuki and over all lack of guidance by people in charge, and broken channels of communications.
The developer also felt extremly sad for several of his colleagues who were passionate about the project and clocked in alot of overtime to make the demoes and videos for the press and trying overall very hard to design the game, in the end all their efforts were worthless as the game was destined to never see the light of day.