Genzo Shimadzu
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
Born the eldest son of the first Genzo Shimadzu, his given name was Umejiro. When the first Genzo died in December 1894, he inherited the family headship, took the name Genzo as the second of that name, and became head of the business at the age of 26. What he inherited was an instrument-making business that was no more than a small enterprise. In October 1896 his own workshop took on the experiments of Professor Hanichi Muraoka of the Third Higher School, and succeeded in taking X-ray photographs using as a power source a Wimshurst electrostatic generator with a glass rotating disc one meter in diameter. The following year, 1897, he began manufacturing lead-acid batteries, supplying power for the equipment in-house. His inventions and devices numbered 178 over his lifetime.
Selection
At the inaugural general meeting on September 1, 1917, he was elected a Director and chosen President by mutual vote. He had no predecessor; the appointment was itself the reorganization converting a 42-year-old sole proprietorship into a joint-stock company. During World War I, Japan's industrial output grew from ¥1.37 billion in 1914 to ¥6.74 billion in 1919, and orders at Shimadzu surged. To bring in outside capital, broaden physics and chemistry instruments and move into industrial machinery, he gathered 43 promoters with the help of Seibei Naiki, who had worked to establish Japan Storage Battery. The ¥2 million in capital, in 40,000 shares, was subscribed by 183 people, and his younger brothers Genkichi Shimadzu and Tsunesaburo Shimadzu sat alongside him as Managing Directors.
Initiatives
Under the principle that "plans should be large, looking ahead to the future," he bought about 33,000 square meters in Kadono District, Kyoto Prefecture, and in October 1919 built the 22 buildings of the Sanjo Works. In December that year the company merged with Takezaki Iron Works of Nagoya to enter gear reducers, launching them in 1920 under the name Gear Coupling. It released educational physics and chemistry instruments matching the Ministry of Education's guidelines for student experiments, materials testing machines starting with the Matsumura repeated impact tester, and X-ray equipment such as the Diana. Capital increases in 1934 and 1937 raised capital from ¥2 million to ¥12 million, and in April 1938 the company listed on the Kyoto Stock Exchange.
Career
Career
Shimadzu
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Sep 1917 | President |
| Jun 1939 | Stepped down as President |
References 2
References (Japanese primary sources)
- 島津製作所百十年史（島津製作所, 1985年）
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年（経済春秋社, 1968）