One of the customers of Ohde Casting had been the “Kubota Match Machine Manufacturers.” The master, Toshiro Kubota, had taken hints from German match carving equipment and developed high precision domestic equipment. He had contributed to the export of matches.
After seeing how Gonshiro Ohde was devoting all his efforts to the domestic production of iron pipes for waterworks, Toshiro possibly saw something of a former himself in Gonshiro, as he started to take care of him, and one day, Toshiro begged Gonshiro to become his adopted son.
Gonshiro accepted after consulting his siblings and also on the condition that he would be able to continue the iron pipe work. He therefore changed his surname to Kubota, and the Ohde Casting Iron Works was renamed the “Kubota Iron Works.”

To respond to the war boom from the First World War, the main plant was made into a plant for machinery and the iron pipe department was moved to the Amagasaki plant. In addition, the casting departments that had been dispersed in various places were concentrated at the newly built Okajima plant in Minamiokajima-cho, Nishi-ku, Osaka (currently: Taisho-ku, Osaka City).
This clarified the bases for the three departments: casting, iron pipes and machinery.
The war had meant imports of pipes from Europe to the Asian market had stopped, so Kubota sent employees to the region to try to break into that market. The efforts were rewarded, and that year the first exports were made, of 2,000 tons of iron pipe to Java (currently: Indonesia).

Automobiles started to replace rickshaws in the middle of the Taisho Period (1912-1926), but the imported vehicles were expensive to buy and maintain and they were also unsuitable for Japan’s narrow roads. For this reason, the “Jitsuyo Jidosha Co., Ltd.” was established, with the aim of manufacturing practical vehicles suitable for Japan.
Kubota purchased a patent from an American visiting Japan and started production of the “Gorham three-wheeled car.” However, the business began to struggle when large numbers of American cars began to be imported after the Great Kanto Earthquake, so the company merged with the Dat Motorcar Company in Tokyo.
In 1931, a prototype was made of a small water-cooled 4 cylinder 500 cc vehicle, and a non-stop driving test from Osaka to Tokyo was performed. The car was put on sale under the name “Datson.”However, they could not overcome the competition from foreign vehicles, and shares in the company were transferred to the “Tobata Casting Co., Ltd.” This was the roots of the present “Nissan Motors Company, Ltd.”

Kubota started to manufacture oil engines for agriculture and industry after being approached about the manufacturing of Japanese engines by Sugiyama Shoten, a pump seller which was also an agent for imported engines. This came just at the time that Kubota was looking for new business that would replace the machinery business, in the midst of the recession after the First World War.
Trial manufacturing and research continued in a corner of the warehouse of the main plant and in April 1923, the agriculture and industry engine Type A, with 3 horsepower, went on sale through the Sugiyama Shoten. The product line was expanded from there, and in 1927 the company developed an engine for fishing boats using magneto and plugs from the German company Bosch.
The Kubota engines were highly evaluated at expositions and comparative judging, and the company’s position in the industry rose steadily.

A revision of the Weights and Measures Act to standardize to the metric system was announced in April 1921 and enacted in July 1924. The first casting job Kubota’s founder had when he arrived in Osaka, and also the first job he did when he opened his own company, was the casting of parts for balances.
The company’s connection to weighing instruments was therefore strong, and so at the opportunity of the law revision, it was decided to enter the weighing machine business.
Kubota obtained a license to produce weighing instruments and started producing platform weighing machines and steelyard balances with upper pans. Kubota bought a limited partnership company Sagawa Seikojo and opened the Ichioka plant at Ichioka-cho, Nishi-ku, Osaka City (currently: Minato-ku, Osaka City).
On the results of prototype weighing instrument standards, which were produced at the request of the Central Weights and Measures Inspectors, the company was registered as a supplier of weighing instrument parts, and its share in the products grew to more than half of the national market.