Yes I'm familiar with Jorg Sprave's crossbow designs, but I don't think those are what the Japanese are going after. It's more likely that Jake Adelstein does not understand what "semiautomatic" means.
Yeah, I got the sense that to the author "semiautomatic" means "pistol grip" and "scary looking".
And even Joerg Sprave's stuff isn't semiautomatic of course, because while he's got designs that have a magazine, there's no mechanism in any of his designs I'm aware of that load another arrow or bolt, or draw the bow without some kind of manual cocking or other user input.