Wonderful stuff. And still promising. Now, AFAIK, 1980. study said that it was likely possible, and maybe achievable with 20-25 years of directed and continued research. And since you would project system around resources it has to work with, it would call for detailed mineralogical studies of the Moon. Clementine probes flying before the end of '80es, with Lunar Prospectors following. Development of heavy lift vehicles in the pipeline.
Thing is, it is a long term project, but since its main directions are AI and industrial automation just development would have much more and much more profitable fruits than other "pure space" research. Most of work is done on Earth, in compsci and robotics research centers, most with immediate applications in industry.
And to emphasize something. We are not talking about any nanotechnology related universal constructor-replicator, those, even if they are possible, weren't related in least to NASA 1980. paper.
So lets say that what is announced is a long term project for economic and industrial development of Earth orbit and Moon, with self rep facility as a long term goal. With main goal being robotics and AI it is very likely Japan would either want to cooperate or start their own program to maintain their leadership in those areas.
For the continuation of '80es and trough '90es we see much more sophisticated moon probes, maybe even new sample retrieval missions, though in coordination with the SRLF project better goal would be to create independent or teleoperated mobile geological laboratories and place them on the Moon to start gathering data.
Assuming rest of the world keeps on OTL events, and that research is at least somewhat fruitful. By 2000. final hardware is being finalized for launch, by either Shuttle C or a new heavy lift vehicle. And doubts of usefulness of project would come to end with 2001. and oil price raise. When a selfrep facility paving moon with solar collectors becomes a very nice thing to have.
So first launches in 2000-2005. timeframe, with entire initial system mass on Moon by 2010. 10 years later first MW start being microwaved or lasered to retransmission facilities in GEO, that were also built on the Moon and launched on electromagnetic launchers (no fuel use is nice, as you will always be short of volatiles on the Moon). Plans to launch second generation self rep systems to permissible asteroids.
2050. deconstruction of Mercury for computronium for Matroshka Brain begins.
Unlike OTL, where it wont likely happen before 2070. (Yes I believe in Big S (being somewhat plausible(and not necessarily the best thing for humanity)))