In the 1950s, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and the Industrial Arts Institute made efforts towards design promotion. Having an in-house design team became mainstream among Japanese companies producing electronic products. In the mid-1950s, major manufacturers founded design departments. He then asked Yoshikazu Mano (1916–2003), who had worked as a lecturer at Chiba University, to establish a design department in the company. In a well-known episode, upon returning to Japan, he declared that the ‘design decade’ had begun. When Konosuke Matsushita (1894–1989), the founder and CEO of Matsushita Electronics, visited the US to research its industries in 1951, he knew that good design could bring higher values to products.
The department invited professors from different disciplines such as cultural anthropology, physiological anthropology, and materials engineering to encourage cross- and trans-disciplinary work and foster integrated design thinking. Shinji Koike (1901–81), a professor in the design department who previously worked at the National Research Institute of Industrial Arts, appealed for a design education methodology based on the concept of cross-fertilisation. The Tokyo Higher School of Arts and Technology was merged into Chiba University in 1949 and, in 1951, became a school of engineering that was required to teach and research design in a more scientific manner. Notable designers such as Kappei Toyoguchi (1905–91) and Isamu Kenmochi (1912–71) emerged. The National Research Institute of Industrial Arts changed its structure to support more technological industries in 1952, changing its name to the Industrial Arts Institute and providing design consulting and design knowledge. Sony was founded in 1946, and Honda in 1948. The major companies were in a recovery mode and entrepreneurs started up businesses. With Japan under American occupation until 1952, the early 1950s was a period of reconstruction following World War II. They led modern design development in Japan. Modern design education and technical research and development were initiated there. In 1921, the government established the Tokyo Higher School of Arts and Technology and, in 1928, the National Research Institute of Industrial Arts was established. However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the focus of design education shifted towards light-industry products. Japan had introduced design education and promotion in the late 19th century with the aim of developing Japanese handicraft industries for export Japan learned design from Europe. After World War II, Japan started all over again. The Design of Radios and Music Players in Japan from the 1950s to the 1970sĭevelopment of Industrial Design in JapanĪfter the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan pushed for modernisation. Takayuki Higuchi is Associate Professor, Department of Design Science, Chiba University, Japan. Jennifer will also inform Professor Higuchi of this licensing out of courtesy.
TRANSISTOR RADIOS 1950S LICENSE
I would like to thank Jennifer Wong, Assistant Curator, Design and Architecture, M+, West Kowloon Cultural District Authority for confirming that M+ has the right to license this article and that M+ grants the Indhhk Group permission to reproduce and publish it on this website for an unlimited period. I thought therefore it would be of considerable interest to read Prof Takayuki Higuchi’s article which as he says focuses on the design of radios and music players and how Japanese designers tackled modern design. The largest four of the latter had backing from Japanese and American concerns. The number of HK radio manufacturing companies rose from three in 1960 to fourteen in 1962. Morita saw assembling his radios in Hong Kong as a solution to his problems as it was part of the British Commonwealth and proposed to Woo that Sony would hire Champagne to assemble Sony radios as sub-contractor in HK…they did.
Shortly after Akio Morita, founder of Sony Corporation of Japan approached Woo as he was he was encountering a lot of resistance in markets, such as the UK, where governments imposed high tariffs to protect their local electronics industry from cheap Japanese imports. York writes, In March 1958 Peter Woo founded Champagne Engineering Corporation Ltd and began assembling transistor radios in Hong Kong using Japanese transistors, making Champagne the first electronics firm in Hong Kong.
Woo – Father of the Hong Kong Electronics Industry, shows the close connection between the electronics industry in Japan and Hong Kong in the late 1950s.
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