Staying with phthalic anhydride after the fatal explosion (1949)

What it meant to hold on to a dangerous technology

The heart of this decision is that Hachiya did not let go of phthalic anhydride — a hazardous mass-production technology — even after an explosion that cost lives. That he examined the causes of the accident technically, and turned that work into a doctorate in engineering and an Okochi Memorial Prize, can be read as the judgment of an engineer who refused to treat danger as a reason to withdraw and took it on instead as something to be controlled. A small firm with neither a 財閥 group nor a bank behind it staked everything on a single point — mass-production technique — and that stake defined the business base it would stand on for decades.

That said, the decision did not by itself bring safety. In 1952 the company carried losses close to its entire capital and came near to failing; without the capital participation of Fuji Iron & Steel, a customer, it might not have continued at all. Only when the managerial judgment to stay with a dangerous technology and an entirely different kind of crisis response — outside financial support — came together did Nippon Shokubai build the footing to escape dependence on one product. To tell this period as nothing but the triumph of technical skill over an explosion is to simplify what actually happened.