The wonderful things in which Japan is number one in the world.
The Nisshin Seifun Group (Nisshin Flour Milling) medicinal segment (presently Nisshin Pharma INC) was the first company in the world to develop a manufacturing method for CoQ10 in 1966. Read More »
2003. The Laboratory in the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio University and 38 enterprises in Japan.
The maximum speed of “Ereca” using Lithium-ion battery power is 370km per hour. It is a five-passenger, eight-wheel-drive car, and motors are encased in each wheel. It is 5.1m in total length, 1.9m in width and about 800 h.p. Fuel consumption is 24km/l in 10.15 running mode.
It is twice or more as good as a passenger car in the same class. It will go 300 km on one battery charge. It can be fully charged in about 5 hours using the power supply at home.
It is generally believed that the first human who flew a glider was the German glider king, Otto Lilienthal. Yet it is said that Kokichi Ukita, a picture framer during the Edo Period, flew more than 100 years before that. Read More »
In 1950, chief engineer of Olympus Optical Co. Ltd. (now Olympus オリンパス) Mutsuo Sugiura and his subordinate Shoji Fukami developed the gastrocamera, the first in the world. From this technology an endoscope and a fiberscope have also been developed. As of 2007, Olympus’ endoscope represents 70% of the world share. Read More »
Yoshio Okada, the Okada company (the present OLFA Corporation) founder, invented the world’s first ‘snap-off blade cutter’ in 1956( Showa 31) . Read More »
In 1956 Morishita Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. launched the sale of the first amino acid crystal infusion (Moriamin,) introducing this medical treatment to the world. Now Ajinomoto KK (味の素) accounts for 60% of the world’s share of amino acid for medical treatment. Read More »
January 2005. MITSUBISHI PENCIL (三菱鉛筆). 0.18mm in ball diameter. PILOT CORPORATION (パイロット) put the finest ballpoint pen in the world, 0.13mm in width of line, on the market, in March 2004, the year before. The pen point is super-hard and 0.23mm in diameter, and super-minute-grain biotechnology Polymer ink is used. The ballpoint pens of 0.15mm in width of line were manufactured 100 million or more, and sold the most in the world.
In September 2005, Honda Motor Co. Ltd (ホンダ) was the first to develop an air bag system for 2-wheeled vehicles to be included in mass production. The air bag reduces injury to the rider in the case of a front-end collision. Read More »
Knitting machine maker Shima Seiki Mfg (島精機製作所). has a 90% domestic share and 60% world share in a computer controlled flat knitting machine. The enterprise was inaugurated in Wakayama in 1962.
In 1995, the Whole Garment flat knitting machine was introduced. It creates knitted articles three-dimensionally without cutting or sewing. About 3,600 sets were shipped by the end of March 2005 to the West and within Japan. Read More »
The sensational discovery of “Neutrino Oscillation” theory provides valuable predictions and plays an important theoretical role in the development of neutrino physics. Read More »
The world’s first digital camera with a liquid crystal display was made by CASIO (カシオ) and put on the market in 1995. It became a big hit. Read More »
Sanyo Electronics developed an LCD projector called the Ultra Short-Throw Multimedia Projector PLC-XL50 (LP-XL50 in Japanese market) in June 2007. This projector projects an image of 80 inches from the main body of the projector just 8 cm (about 3.2inches) away. This is the world’s shortest projection distance. Sanyo’s previous projector LP-XL40’s projection distance was 103cm (about 40.6inches). In PLC-XL50, Sanyo put the lens in the back of the main component of the projector, so the distance from the lens is 46cm (about 18.1inches), less than half the distance of the LP-XL40. Read More »
In 1984 Prof. Ken Sakamura (坂村 健) of Tokyo University developed a basic computer software called Tron or “The Realtime Operating system Nucleus”. It enabled a very fast computer processing speed and was so simple that anyone could use it. Its specifications were open source. Read More »
OMRON HEALTHCARE(オムロン ヘルスケア) occupies a 60% share of the home blood pressure monitor market, and it is the largest in the world. In the United States its share reaches 70%. Omron’s models are accurate, high quality and simple to use. More than half of the pharmacists recommend and evaluate them highly.
Omron’ models are recommended by pharmacists in the “Pharmacy Times” (Jun) magazine. “People in the United States have evaluated the precision and quality of use. The standard return rate of consumer products in the United States is usually 10%, but it is only 5% on average for Omron’s models. People of the retail industry can trust and sell them without worry.” <Extract from “the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Chicago, Chicago business support corner, ‘good access and the enhancement of the infrastructure are splendid, Midwestern business environment’ “> Read More »
In December 2003, the wireless service provider Tu-Ka announced the TS41 — the world’s first mobile phone conducting sound through the user’s bone. Now the hard of hearing and people in high noise conditions can hear signals more effectively than with a conventional phone. Read More »
In January 2005, Fujitsu Ltd.,(富士通) Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.(富士通研究所) and Toray Industries, Inc.(東レ) joined to develop the first plant-based plastics for use in personal computers. Since global warming caused by environmental pollution has become a serious social problem, the technical development of CO2 reduction is greatly promoted. Read More »
Minebea(ミネベア) has 60% market share in the class of bearings measuring 22mm and under. Bearings are precision objects used for stable axis rotation in machines. The accuracy of bearings influences greatly the quality of end products. Read More »
China was the birthplace of the brush. It started with a brush of animal hair made by General Meng Tian in the Qin Dynasty and presented to the emperor Shi Huang-ti. In the Yamato period, the brush was introduced to Japan along with Buddhism and Chinese script. Read More »
“Yagi Antenna” is used all over the world and was invented by Hidetsugu Yagi and Shintaro Uda at Tohoku University 30 years after the start of the wireless communication age, which was at the end of the 19th century. Read More »
Jun-ichi Nishizawa (西澤 潤一), “Mr. Semiconductor” and “Father of Optical communication”, is famous worldwide as a creative researcher in semiconductor engineering. Read More »
