Founder’s Reflections: A Technologist's Reminiscences
From student to military era
I entered Lushun Technical Preparatory School in Lushun, a famous battleground in the Russo-Japanese War, from Fushun Junior High School in a coal mining town. I graduated in December 1941, the same month that Pearl Harbor was attacked. This was the first step in a turbulent human history.
The number of students in the main department of the university was about 200, and since it was divided into nine departments, the number of professors and other faculty members was larger than the number of students. However, even during the war, I was able to enjoy my youth in the club life and in my hobbies, and I can say that my days were very blessed compared to today's student life.
Although the end of my studies was delayed by three months due to an emergency military enlistment following the attack on Pearl Harbor, I had plenty of time to pursue my hobbies, including archery club activities during my pre-college years and assembly of radio equipment during my main studies. The fact that the Kyudo club won the Inter-High School Championship was the result of wasting time on this hobby, and as a result, I was able to study more about weak electric current, which eventually became the main technology of Ono Sokki. Of course, I had no way of knowing this at the time, as a student.
Before the war, electrical engineering was primarily focused on so-called strong electricity, such as power transmission, while the weak electricity technologies related to communication and information, which are now prevalent, were hardly recognized as academic fields at that time. Particularly in Manchuria, the idea that bigger is better was rampant, and of course, there were no classes related to this at the Dalian Institute of Technology.
However, the electronics and especially digital technologies that I am now primarily engaged in were not present in pre-war Japan, and particularly the digital measurement of mechanical quantities was something I had to learn entirely on my own, having to come up with the terminology myself; it was truly a new field of technology. However, one could say that I spent a fortunate time where any thought could be considered original.
I served as the captain of the archery club (myself in the upper left).
When I graduated, it was just as the world war began, and the mindset that joining the military was a natural duty if one was physically able had permeated the entire nation. I, who disliked physical activity, felt the same about sports in general, but especially about combat training, which was my weakest area. However, considering that military life was an unavoidable duty, I thought that if I could utilize my expertise even a little, I would take the exam to become an army technical officer. Fortunately, I passed the exam safely and enlisted as a trainee officer in the Army Technical Candidate Corps in Takino River in February of Showa 17, and in April, I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the army and returned to Manchuria, where I was assigned to the South Manchurian Army Arsenal in Wenkantun, just north of Fengtian, at the train station.
The choice I made was not a profession I chose because I liked the military or training. In Showa 19, Wenkantun was rather my least favorite and most disliked field. It was inevitable that the sudden leap to becoming an elite professional soldier in just a few months would cause various frictions with the pure professional soldiers around me.
However, the methods of troop command and the bible of how to formulate operations that I was forced to learn in this disliked military, such as the Operational Orders and military strategy, had a common thought that helped me later when I encountered various difficulties in company management, and honestly, I cannot express how much it helped me later.
Moreover, at that time, the army, especially the local arsenals, hardly required advanced specialized knowledge from technical officers. I was also assigned to the materials section of the operations department, which was administrative work, and was solely responsible for material arrangements for military mobilization plans, expressing my dissatisfaction daily about not being able to use my expertise in electricity.
However, looking around, I saw that the army was producing Type 97 medium tanks and various shells and explosives within the arsenal. Moreover, it was a military factory. Even though the efficiency was poor, it had first-class new equipment for Japan at that time, and the library was overflowing with engineering books from both domestic and foreign sources that were not seen elsewhere. Therefore, I decided to delegate my work to my subordinates and create free time to learn the working methods of those factories and read books in the library to relieve my frustrations.
Also, fortunately, I was also serving as a supervisor of the military factory, so I could freely visit any civilian factory. At that time, the civilian military factories in Manchuria were mainly located in the Tiexi area of Fengtian. I took advantage of the supervisor's privileges to frequently visit subsidiaries of Nippon Optical, Manchuria Optical, and Sumitomo Electric, now NEC, among others, and I was able to study the manufacturing methods of various weapons that were considered precision machinery at that time. However, as the war situation worsened day by day, the steelmaking mecca of Manchuria, Anshan, which corresponded to Yahata in Japan, was bombed.
In response to the subsequent measures, I opened a supervisory office and served as its director. However, here too, I gained knowledge completely unrelated to my previous experiences, such as steelmaking, metallurgy, and quenching, for about a year. When I think about it, the measurement industry requires a wide range of knowledge, even if shallow, to respond to various requests from customers regarding what matters, where to measure, and how to do it. The random and unstructured experiences I went through later proved to be invaluable when I opened my measurement business.
Next, as the end of the war approached, the only aircraft manufacturer in Manchuria, the Manchurian Aircraft in Fengtian, was bombed. Consequently, part of the Manchurian Aircraft was urgently relocated to Gongzhuling and Harbin.
Additionally, I was transferred to the supervisor team leader in Gongzhuling. Here, I was responsible for the final stages of production of the Army Type 4 fighter aircraft, as well as engine and airframe inspections. The opportunity to closely observe the gears and broaching work of aircraft engines, which can be considered as precision machining samples, was indeed very helpful in the development of Ono Sokki's main products today, such as research machines for automobiles and precision inspection tools for machining.
During my time as an electrical engineering student, I also took classes in mechanical engineering as an elective. However, the popular classes during my student days do not necessarily align with what is needed in society.
I found theory and mathematics somewhat cool, and I took materials mechanics, which is similar to electrical alternating current theory, but I thought machining and machining materials were rather dull and did not attend those classes. However, the reality is that things cannot be made with theory alone.
Through my challenging experiences in military manufacturing, I was deeply impressed that what is necessary is not theory, but mechanical engineering, especially machining and machining materials. This is because nothing can be made without machine tools and machining materials.
Therefore, I invited Professor Doi, a master of machining from Dalian Institute of Technology, to the arsenal as a lecturer, and we decided to study together. Thanks to this, I also had to thoroughly study machinery from the beginning. Later, when I received my degree from Kyoto University, I submitted it to the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In other words, my military experience led me to change my specialization from electrical engineering in strong current to mechanical engineering.
As mentioned earlier, before the war, Japan had almost no technology in weak electricity. The Yagi antenna, which was invented in Japan, became a radar for the U.S. military and troubled our army. This also shows that theory alone is not useful; it is all about practice. The electronics technology that Japan excels in today was introduced from the United States after the war. The pioneers in that dawn period were the aircraft manufacturers who were banned from research by the occupying forces and the technical officers of the Army and Navy who were purged and lost their bases.
I could not work in the strong current industry, which I had longed for, as there was no grand work in power distribution like in pre-war Manchuria, but thanks to that, I was able to enter the field of electronics, which mixed the newly emerged weak electricity and mechanical engineering. Moreover, there was a fortunate aspect in this field, as if the goddess of fate had opened a path for us who were in a difficult situation.
From the military, through repatriation after the defeat, I lamented that I had wasted my flexible youth at that time, but I believe that today's foundation was born from that continuous life of futility. In any case, it is ironic that the unexpected fate of life leads one to work that one dislikes, and that one ends up having to eat from such work.
Fortunately, this technology was also connected to digital CPUs and developed into our company's flagship digital technology. As you mentioned above, our company began with digital technology based on crystal oscillators, that is, time measurement. Later, digital technologies such as frequency within a certain time—frequency, phase difference, Fourier transform FFT, and so on—developed. Among these, torque meters that measure using phase difference have become my life's work to this day.
This digital technology was later widely adopted by manufacturers worldwide as a performance testing machine for automobiles and durability testing machines. Along with the torque meter, I received the Technical Merit Award from the Japan Automotive Technology Association, the Purple Ribbon Medal of Honor from the government, and I consider it an honor to be designated as a Fellow (Grade of Membership) at the National Purple Ribbon Medal of Honor ceremony and by SAE, the original company of the Automotive Technology Association in the United States.
However, until now, my products have mainly been used for the Labor Standards Act, specifically for psychological use. Still, since I graduated from the Faculty of Engineering, I had a long-cherished hope to expand into the industrial sector alongside the revival of the factory. The first technology to apply this to industrial fields was the Shinkansen, newly created and perfected in postwar Japan. The technical challenge for this Shinkansen was to run the world's first electric train in commercial operation at 250 km/h. At that speed, the issues were whether electricity could be stably collected from the overhead wire, and the effectiveness of the brakes; this was the measurement method.
So, I came up with my own method for measuring a specific time on the overhead wire, the ratio of disconnection between them, and the disconnection rate, as well as a brake measurement bill, and explained this to researchers at the Railway Technical Research Institute located inside an old railway vehicle near Oimachi Station at the time. For the disconnection rate meter, if you think of a tube counter as a stopwatch, for example, you can determine disconnection within 10 seconds, run the tube counter during that time, integrate the seconds, and divide by 10 seconds to get the disconnection rate. Also, it measures the time until the car body stops after applying the brake, and that is considered the brake performance. There was a bit of a twist in determining what is stationary, but looking back, it was Columbus's egg, based on the same principle as a reaction timer. In the end, my proposal was adopted, and even now, it is often discussed among people at the Railway Technical Research Institute at the time.
Also, the brake tester cost about 9 million yen on a large scale, which was roughly equivalent to three months' production of Ono Sokki at the time. Naturally, during that time, there was no time to do other work, and for three months, all collection from other sources stopped, and K Bank was on high alert.
Next, it is worth noting that research on aircraft, which had been banned after the war, was permitted, and Rolls-Royce jet engines were also supplied to Japan at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry's Mechanical Testing Laboratory. Immediately, I adopted a counter-type tachometer that had long been researched in the industrial field. This was the second type of vacuum tube counter applied to industrial fields from a reaction time meter compliant with the Labor Standards Act. This tachometer was praised as having not yet been used by the original Rolls-Royce company. Since then, high-speed tachometers such as jet engines and superchargers have been made Ono Sokki. This machine later became established for automotive use as well and became the basic product of Ono Sokki.
Next, Honda was conducting research on horsepower increases in Asama, aiming to make motorcycles world-class by winning races in the Isle of Man in the UK and gaining global recognition. This assistance marked the beginning of his relationship with the automotive industry, and during this period, he established a company that had previously operated as a private Ono Sokki research institute as Ono Sokki Manufacturing Co., Ltd. This was in January 1954.
Creation is a challenge to create something new, and one must not be stingy with time.
Post-war Japan has developed by striving to catch up with and surpass advanced countries, borrowing their wisdom while investing low wages, high quality under the banner of QC, and its inherent diligence. However, wages have now risen to the highest levels in the world, and there are fewer themes to surpass advanced countries. From now on, we must create everything ourselves, as we can no longer rely on being taught. Therefore, factories are moving to Taiwan, Thailand, and even China in search of low wages. In other words, they are catching up with lower-developed countries. The result of this is the current recession. To overcome this recession, we can no longer lower wages or borrow wisdom from advanced countries. Each individual must think and act for themselves; in other words, there is no path other than creation.
Let’s consider what this creation is. It is a challenge to new things. It is not mere memorization. It cannot be learned simply by reading books or being taught by others. It must be something that one must think of for oneself.
However, as long as one does not fall behind others in time, it does not matter how long it takes. From my own experience, looking back, even a slight advance can take 10 or 20 years. If you are stingy with time, you will not create anything worthwhile. Rather, the things created over time tend to have longer lifespans and are of higher quality.
In my youth, I sometimes lamented that the things I learned reluctantly were wasted efforts, but over time, they all became useful and part of me. If I had only done what I liked, I would not have achieved this.
Moreover, the knowledge of low voltage, which is now fundamental to Ono Sokki, is a skill that I acquired without formal education. If I had challenged the telecommunications industry or the information industry with that low voltage technology, it might not have been useful at all. It was precisely because I applied the technology I learned reluctantly in the machinery industry that I was able to create original products recognized in the world.
When young, one can remember things without studying if they are enjoyable. However, for things one dislikes or is forced to do, one should take the initiative and put in the effort. Eventually, that will become the seed, and in a long life, a path will surely open up.
There was a time when I was desperately trying to get a job in the shipbuilding field after the war. However, the engines for Japanese shipbuilding were mostly made under foreign licenses. This meant that the types of measuring instruments were determined by the license holders. No matter how good the measuring instruments I brought were, they were not adopted.
However, the homegrown technology of Japanese shipyards after the war was in ship shape. Therefore, measuring instruments for ship shape testing could almost monopolize each shipyard from the Transport Research Institute.
However, Mitsubishi's Nagasaki shipyard was different; they were able to design UE engines on their own. Thus, since the time when Ono Sokki had only 2 or 3 employees, we have been extensively used in hydraulic measurements, engine design, turbines, and generators. The same goes for Mitsubishi in Nagoya and Tokyo.
Without waiting for funds, completed technology, land, factories, or local connections, it is very difficult to break into established fields, and it is better to think that it is almost impossible by normal means. However, if you challenge yourself with newly conceived and created technology, gaps and paths will naturally open up.
In my case, aside from choosing electrical engineering at Dalian University of Technology, the goddess of fate left me no room for free choice due to wars and defeat. It was either a path I disliked or an unexpected direction. In the end, it seems that the strong electrical technology I wanted to pursue was not used at all. However, even in the midst of dislike, I simply obeyed the goddess of fate. Nevertheless, I believe I did my best, considering what seemed optimal at each moment.
In a way, the paths I dislike are generally disliked by others as well. Therefore, if you seriously think about your disliked fields, it is easier to create original products, and it might even be more comfortable to live in.
Moreover, if you only follow the paths you like, your perspective inevitably narrows, making it difficult to create original products. My hobby, the weak electrical technology I learned on the side, probably would not have been accepted in the world. It was precisely because I was connected to unpleasant machines and various unexpected, unusual technologies that luck began to turn in my favor.