Takeji Yamada and Osaka Kikai Seisakusho Co., Ltd.

Abstract

This paper tries to follow the trajectory of Osaka Kikai Seisakusho Co., Ltd., one of fast-growing machinery companies and its owner-manager, Takeji Yamada in inter-war and wartime Japan and to examine the significant role of Kikutarō Honda, an outstanding engineer who played major role in the growth of Osaka Kikai Seisakusho into one of the leading spinning machinery manufacturers. After cutting their ways through the 1920s of adversity by means of managerial rationalization and diversification of their products, Osaka Kikai Seisakusho Co., Ltd. could find out spinning machinery and its parts as cornerstone products, and rapidly enlarged their managerial scale by the M＆A strategies in the 1930s after Manchurian Incident. Takeji Yamada in resonance with an idea of “Rural Industrialization” advocated by Masatoshi Ōkōchi was appointed as an auditor of Riken Piston Ring Co., and became president of newly established Tsugami Seisakusho, manufacturer of gauges, supporting activities of Taisuke Tsugami, a pioneer of precision block gauges in Japan. Yamada well responded to managerial circumstances in quasi-war and wartime periods, developing many factories in Kansai region, Nagoya, Tokyo, and Nagaoka in Niigata prefecture. He was the most favored child of the age and could maintain the status of an owner-manager in spite of rapid expansion of the company. Responding to the request from the wartime government, Osaka Kikai Seisakusho Co., Ltd. preserved its characteristics of an industrial machinery manufacturer even in the latter part of Asian-Pacific War. The production of artillery and aircraft parts was executed by the part of machines and equipment of Osaka factory, while the factories of Amagasaki, Nagoya and Nagaoka mainly manufactured and built various kinds of industrial machinery and machine tools, which reflected cautiousness of Yamada to the munition production.