Iwatsu Electric, Co., Ltd. (岩崎通信機株式会社, Iwasaki Tsūshinki Kabushiki-gaisha) TYO: 6704 is a Japanese electronics manufacturer founded 14 August 1938. Iwatsu Electric is a member of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFJ) keiretsu.
History Originally starting up as a telephone manufacturer, Iwatsu had been a longtime supplier to the public Nippon Telegraph and Telephone company. The company has enjoyed growth along the public NTT, expanding its products to radio communication equipment, oscilloscopes, and in the year 1961, their first reprographic system.
Seiichi Iwasaki: Founder Seiichi Iwasaki was born in 1895 in Shimane, Japan. As a teenager, he moved to Tokyo without his family. He worked by day to support himself and went to school by night. Whilst in school, he became the leader of a circle of like-minded friends, which they called Hatenkai. Together, they vowed to succeed in the future. Iwasaki dropped out of school in 1912 and began his military service in 1913 in Okayama—which he completed in three years. Then he moved to Hokkaidō where he started his career as an entrepreneur. His ventures in Hokkaidō stretched from railroads to coal mines, until the year 1933 when he changed his course and came back to Tokyo again.
1930s Seiichi Iwasaki was running a small business called Iwasaki Kogyo in the Yoyogi neighborhood of Tokyo for manufacturing and selling cables. Iwasaki realized that in order to stay in business, he needed to follow the national policy and produce what the country needed at the time. The first focus was on anti-induction telephones. In the 1930s, the telephone infrastructure in Japan was primarily used by the railroad industry, the police, the utility industry and the mining industry. The telecommunications infrastructure was so poor that it had to rely on power lines and railway cables—upon which telephone signals were superimposed. Because the telephone signals were susceptible to inductive interference and noise and the defective wiring in the long lines caused too much signal loss, normal telephone conversations were difficult. Iwasaki Kogyo set out to develop an anti-induction telephone to solve this problem, whilst running the cable manufacturing operations. Similarly, Iwasaki Kogyo focused on secure, anti-tapping telephones. Motivated by these opportunities, he started looking for engineers. Luckily he knew engineers from the members of Hatenkai: Minoru Tokoha and Motosaburo Hashimoto. When he talked to them, they both showed strong interest. With the help of these two engineers, he set up a lab in his own house in Yoyogi to develop the two kinds of special-purpose telephones. After six months, Tokoha and Hashimoto introduced Iwasaki to Kokichi Hayakawa, the television research chief at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Waseda University. With the addition of Hayakawa, the development of special-purpose telephones speeded up and the anti-induction telephone and then the anti-tapping telephone were completed by the middle of 1937. (Hayakawa later became the first chief engineer/vice president of Iwatsu.) The sales of anti-induction telephones started in October 1937, and the police, the Ministry of Railway, the power industry, the railroad industry and the mining industry welcomed the product. Demand quickly outstripped capacity, forcing Iwasaki to extend the factory. Iwasaki knew that a privately owned business was not enough to meet such high demands and decided to incorporate a company. On August 14, 1938, the inauguration ceremony of Iwasaki Tsushinki (communication instruments) was held at Iwasaki's own house. (The name Iwatsu became the official abbreviation for Iwasaki Tsushinki in 1967.) Initially, there were 50 employees. They were manufacturing the said telephones and carrier-current telephones, plus components (relays, transformers, capacitors, etc.) necessary for making the telephones. Because the small factory, though extended, couldn't handle the increasing orders anymore, a new, bigger factory was built in 1939 in Karasuyama, Tokyo. The production department was moved to this new factory, leaving the other operations in Yoyogi. Around this time, the number of employees increased to approximately 200.
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