Kubota - Company History

The founding years, aimed squarely at cast iron pipe for waterworks

In February 1890 Kubota Gonshiro (久保田権四郎) founded Kubota Iron Works (久保田鉄工所) at Mikuratoato-cho, Minami-ku, Osaka[1], and began making and selling castings of every kind[2]. It started as a town workshop under sole proprietorship, and Gonshiro was both its founder and its first president[3]. Three years later, in July 1893, it took up the manufacture of cast iron pipe for waterworks[4]. What it made in these founding years was castings of various sorts, chiefly cast iron pipe for water and gas[5]. Casting pipe was not easy, however, and a further seven years passed from that start before a technique fit for volume production was established[6].

The barrier to volume was broken by a refinement of the casting method: in 1900 he devised the marubuki tatekomi vertical casting process (丸吹立込鋳造法) and put it into practice[7]. The following year, 1901, the Funayama-cho works was built[8] and began making and selling cast iron pipe and machinery of various kinds[9]. In 1908 he went on to devise a rotary casting process for cast iron pipe and obtained a patent on it[10], settling into a pattern of assembling casting techniques in-house and fencing them in with patents. Holding both the plants and the techniques, cast iron pipe settled in as the pillar of Kubota Iron Works[11].

The Taisho years, widening from castings into machinery

As the casting business grew, Gonshiro turned to the machining of what it cast, and in 1914 he added a machine shop at the Funade-cho works[12] and began building marine machinery such as steam engines[13]. In 1916 the range widened to machine tools, economisers, stokers, sluice valves and general machinery[14], and in 1918 to moulds[15]. Rather than merely selling castings, the company set itself up to build the machines that used them[16], and through the Taisho years the work of grafting a second pillar, machinery, onto the single pillar of cast iron pipe went forward.

As demand for cast iron pipe and castings rose, the company bought the means of production outright: in 1917 it acquired Kansai Iron Works (関西鉄工所), made it the Amagasaki plant, and moved the cast iron pipe division of the Funade-cho works there[17]. Alongside it built the Okajima plant (恩加島) for fittings, and the Ichioka plant for drainage pipe, fittings and general castings[18]. In February 1922 it took up the manufacture of small engines for farm and industrial use[19], and in the same year began casting heat-, acid- and alkali-resistant castings, gunmetal and light alloys[20]. The engine business that would later grow into farm machinery began in that year[21]. In November 1919 it also set up Jitsuyo Jidosha Seizo and tried its hand at building three- and four-wheeled vehicles, but that venture found no market and was withdrawn.

Casting technology fenced in by patents, and the purchase of Sumidagawa Seitetsujo

The accumulated casting knowledge showed itself at the end of the Taisho era in two patents: an automatic core-making machine in 1923[22] and an automatic moulding machine in 1924[23]. Both replaced hand work with machinery, and with these two the volume production of cast iron pipe advanced a stage[24]. In 1924, in step with the revision of the Weights and Measures Law, the Funade-cho works also began making weighing machines[25]. The casting techniques and the machines that supported them were now both held in-house[26].

Additions to plant continued: in February 1927 the company bought Sumidagawa Seitetsujo Ltd. (隅田川精鉄所) and expanded the cast iron pipe business[27]. In that same year, 1927, it also took up automatic stokers, diesel engines and small marine engines[28]. In under forty years from its founding, Kubota Iron Works had reached a size carrying four product groups — cast iron pipe, castings, machinery and engines[29]. A town workshop under sole proprietorship could no longer contain that spread[30].

Incorporation, splitting castings and machinery into two companies

In December 1930 Kubota Iron Works took corporate form by splitting into two joint-stock companies[31]. One was Kubota Iron Works Ltd., capitalised at ¥4.5 million, making chiefly cast iron pipe for water and gas and castings of all kinds[32]; the other was Kubota Iron Works Machinery Division Ltd. (久保田鉄工所機械部), capitalised at ¥2.5 million, making internal-combustion engines, land and marine machinery, machinery for iron- and steel-making, sluice valves, weighing machines and machine tools[33]. The two lineages, castings and machinery, were split into two companies as they stood. In the same year, 1930, the company mark was redrawn as well: the circle-and-cast-iron-pipe design adopted in 1925[34] had its circle replaced by a gearwheel[35]. It was a rewriting of the sign, from the Kubota of castings to the Kubota of castings and machinery[36].

The two-company structure was folded up after seven years: in March 1937 Kubota Iron Works Machinery Division Ltd. was merged into Kubota Iron Works Ltd.[37] In September of that year the company bought Daido Iron Works (大同鉄工所) and made it a steel-casting plant[38], and in November it built the Sakai plant and began mass production of engines for farm and industrial use[39], installing new machinery imported from Europe and the United States[40]. In August 1938 Sumidagawa Seitetsujo was merged in as the Sumidagawa plant[41], taken into the organisation eleven years after its purchase in 1927.

Production sites went on spreading as war approached: in October 1940 the Mukogawa plant was built to expand the industrial machinery business[42], and from October of the following year it began casting centrifugally cast iron pipe[43]. In March 1943 the Kanzaki plant was established[44], and in the same month the company entered the casting of special cast-steel products and high-silicon cast iron[45]. In July 1945 the Fuse plant was added[46]. Of these, the Kanzaki plant in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, would become the scene, more than sixty years later, of the asbestos damage that shook the company's management[47].

Post-war farm machinery, which began with the power tiller

In March 1946, the year after the defeat, the company began making sawmill machinery and machinery for mining[48], and in 1947 it took up the power tiller[49]. The farm machinery division that would later account for four-tenths of sales[50] began with that tiller. Using as the power source the small farm and industrial engines it had started in 1922[51], Kubota crossed over to making the machines the farmer himself used. In May 1949 it listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Stock Exchange[52], and in August 1950 it adopted a divisional structure by product[53], putting in a mechanism that closed the books on profit and loss product by product.

The post-war product range thickened around cast iron pipe as well: in July 1950 came metal-mould centrifugally cast iron pipe[54], in 1951 chrome cast iron pipe and cement-lined pipe together with civil-engineering and construction plant of various kinds[55], and in 1952 cast steel pipe and pumps[56]. In December 1952 the Mukogawa machinery works began making pumps[57]. From a company that made the pipes of a waterworks, the range widened to one that handled the equipment moving the water as well[58].

A change of name, and the start of asbestos pipe production

In June 1953 the company changed its name to Kubota Tekko Ltd. (久保田鉄工)[59]. The following year, 1954, it began making asbestos pipe and vinyl pipe[60], and in April of that year it built a vinyl pipe plant and entered full production of synthetic-resin pipe[61]. Asbestos-bearing water pipe was a piping material in wide use at the time, and it is from this year, 1954, that the handling of asbestos began — the asbestos later called to account as damage in the neighbourhood of the old Kanzaki plant[62].

In the second half of the 1950s the range stretched further into housing materials and steel pipe: in April 1956 into mobile cranes and materials-handling machinery[63], and in November 1957 into housing materials with the establishment of Kubota Kenzai Kogyo Ltd. (久保田建材工業)[64]. In December 1959 it began making spiral steel pipe[65] and built the Ohama plant in the same month[66]. The skeleton of four divisions — cast iron pipe, farm machinery, general machinery and castings[67] — was largely in place by this time. Of the four, the one that would step into the leading role over the next decade was farm machinery[68].