Founder's Essay: "A Technician's Reflections"

Pre-war electrical engineering primarily focused on so-called high-voltage systems such as power generation and transmission. Low-voltage technologies, such as those used in communications and information technology, which are thriving today, were hardly recognized as academic subjects, although they were certainly enjoyed as a hobby. In particular, in Manchuria on the mainland, the idea that bigger is better was prevalent, and of course, there were no courses on these topics at the Ryojun Institute of Technology.
However, the electronics, especially digital technology, which is my main focus now, was a technology that did not exist in Japan before the war. In particular, digital measurement of mechanical quantities was entirely self-taught, and I had to come up with the terminology myself; it was truly a new technological field. But, in a way, you could say that I lived in a fortunate era where anything I thought of could be considered original.

He is the captain of the archery club (pictured in the upper left).
When I graduated, the World War had just begun, and the idea that joining the military was a natural obligation for anyone in good health had permeated the entire nation. I disliked physical activity, and this was true for sports in general, but military training, especially combat training, was my weakest area. However, I thought that if I could make use of my expertise even a little in the military life that I could not avoid and which was my duty, then I would take the entrance exam to become a technical officer in the army. Fortunately, I passed the exam and in February of the following year, 1942, I joined the Army Technical Officer Candidate Corps in Takinogawa as a probationary officer. In April, I was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Army Technical Corps, and I returned to Manchuria, where I was assigned to the South Manchuria Army Arsenal in Wenguantun, one station north of Fengtian, by train.
The path I took was not one I chose because I liked the military or military training. In fact, it was the civilian-government unit, a field I disliked and was most uncomfortable with. And suddenly, within a few months, I had jumped into the elite ranks of professional soldiers, so it was inevitable that there would be various frictions with the veteran professional soldiers around me.

However, the military training I received—which I disliked—involved in things like troop command, operational procedures, and military strategy, which I learned from the bible of military command and operational planning, later proved invaluable when I encountered various difficulties in running my company. To be honest, I can't express how much that training helped me later on.
Furthermore, the army at that time, especially in local arsenals, had little need for the advanced specialized knowledge of technical officers. I was assigned to the materials section of the operations department, where my duties were primarily administrative, and I was tasked with planning military mobilization and mainly procuring materials. I was constantly frustrated that I couldn't use my expertise in electricity.
However, looking around, I noticed that the factory was manufacturing the Army's Type 97 medium tank, various types of ammunition, and gunpowder. Moreover, it was a military factory. Although inefficient, it possessed state-of-the-art equipment that was top-notch for Japan at the time, and the library was overflowing with domestic and foreign engineering books that could not be found anywhere else. So, I decided to leave the work to my subordinates and, in my free time, learn the working methods of those factories and relieve my frustration by reading books in the library.
Fortunately, I also served as a supervisor for munitions factories, which allowed me to freely visit any civilian factory. At the time, the main group of civilian munitions factories in Manchuria was located in Tiexi, Fengtian. I would spend time there whenever I had free time, taking advantage of my supervisory privileges, learning about the manufacturing methods of various weapons, which were considered precision machinery at the time, such as Manchurian Optical, a subsidiary of Nippon Kogaku, and Manchurian Communications, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Communications (now NEC). However, as the war situation worsened day by day, Anshan, the mecca of steelmaking in Manchuria, equivalent to Yawata in Japan, was bombed.
To address the subsequent issues, I established a supervisory office and served as its director. However, even there, for about a year, I acquired knowledge completely unrelated to my previous experience, including ironmaking, steelmaking, metallurgy, and heat treatment. Looking back, in the measurement industry, you never know what kind of requirements customers will have—what they want measured, where they want measured, and how they want measured. To meet these demands, measurement manufacturers need broad knowledge, even if it's only superficial. It's true that the random, seemingly unrelated experiences I had later found invaluable when I opened my own measurement business.

Next, as the end of the war approached, Manchuria Aircraft, the only aircraft manufacturer in Manchuria, was bombed in Fengtian. As a result, some of Manchuria Aircraft's aircraft were hastily evacuated to Gongzhuling and Harbin.
Furthermore, I was transferred to the position of supervisor at Gongzhuling. There, I was in charge of the final stages of production for the Army Type 4 fighter aircraft, as well as the engine and airframe inspections. The opportunity to closely observe the gears and brouching work of aircraft engines, which can be considered a prime example of precision machining, was indeed extremely helpful in the development of Ono Sokki 's main products today: research equipment for automobiles and precision inspection tools for machining.
During my time as an electrical engineering student, I could also take mechanical engineering courses as an elective. However, popular courses during student life don't necessarily mean they'll be necessary in the real world.
I, too, found theory and mathematics somewhat cool, and I even took a course in mechanics of materials because it resembled AC theory in electricity. However, I found manufacturing and materials science to be unsophisticated, and I didn't attend those classes. But in reality, theory alone isn't enough to create anything.
My experience in military manufacturing, which I wasn't good at, taught me the hard way that what's absolutely essential isn't theory, but mechanical engineering, especially machine tools and materials science. That's because no matter what you make, you can't make anything without machine tools and materials.
Therefore, we invited Professor Doi, a master craftsman from the Lushun Institute of Technology, to the arsenal as a lecturer, and we all studied together. Thanks to him, I was able to thoroughly relearn mechanics from scratch. Later, when I received my degree from Kyoto University, I even submitted it to the Department of Mechanical Engineering. In other words, my military experience resulted in me changing my specialization from high-voltage electrical engineering to mechanical engineering.

As mentioned earlier, pre-war Japan had virtually no low-voltage technology. The Yagi antenna, which was invented in Japan, became part of the US military's radar system and caused trouble for our forces. This also demonstrates that theory alone is useless; practical application is essential. The electronics technology that Japan excels at today was introduced from the United States after the war. The pioneers in its early stages were the aircraft engineers, whose research was prohibited by the occupying forces, and the technical officers of the army and navy who were purged and lost their base of operations.
Since there were no more exciting power transmission and distribution jobs like those in pre-war Manchuria, I couldn't pursue my dream of working in the high-voltage electrical industry. However, thanks to a newly emerging field that combined low-voltage electrical engineering with mechanical engineering, I was able to enter the field of electronics. In fact, this field seemed to be a stroke of luck, as if the goddess of fortune had deliberately opened a path for us when we were in a difficult situation.
From the military, which I disliked, to repatriation after the defeat, I lamented at the time that I had wasted my youth, a time when my mind was still flexible. However, I believe that the foundation of who I am today was born from that continuous life of idleness and futility. In any case, life is full of unexpected fates, and it is ironic that one may end up making a living doing work that one hates.

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.

There was a time after the war when I was desperately trying to get a job in the shipbuilding industry. However, most of the engines used in Japanese shipbuilding are manufactured under license from foreign companies. This means that the types of measuring instruments used are determined by the licensee. No matter how good my ideas for measuring instruments were, they were never adopted.
However, the only technology that Japanese shipyards possessed after the war was ship design. Therefore, they were able to almost exclusively monopolize the measuring instruments for ship design testing, which were supplied by the Japan Transport Technology Research Institute.
However, Mitsubishi's Nagasaki Shipyard is an exception; they design their own UE engines. Therefore, even when Ono Sokki had only two or three employees, they used our equipment extensively for hydraulic measurements, engine design, turbines, and generators. The same is true for Mitsubishi's Nagoya and Tokyo locations.
Breaking into an established field without funding, established technology, land, factories, or local connections is extremely difficult, and it's best to assume it's practically impossible through conventional methods. However, if you desperately try with new, self-developed technology, opportunities and paths will naturally open up.
In my case, aside from choosing electrical engineering at the Ryojun Institute of Technology, the goddess of fate, with its wars and defeats, left me no room for free choice. It was either a path I disliked or a direction I never expected. In the end, it seems I never got to use the high-voltage electrical technology I had long desired to pursue. However, even amidst my reluctance, I simply obediently followed the goddess of fate. That said, I believe I did my best in each situation, considering what I thought was the optimal course of action.
If you think about it, most people dislike the paths you dislike. Therefore, if you seriously consider the areas you dislike, original works are more likely to emerge, and perhaps it's actually a more comfortable place to live.
Furthermore, if you only pursue your own interests, your perspective inevitably narrows, making it difficult to create original products. My hobby, the low-voltage electrical technology I learned casually, would never have been accepted by the public. It was precisely because I connected with unfamiliar machinery and various unexpected and unusual technologies that luck came my way.