Purchased the Sumidagawa Iron Works
and expanded the iron pipe department
In 1927, Kubota had the biggest share in the iron pipe market, at 42%. However, in order to obtain bases in the Kanto Region, and therefore to gain an absolute advantage, Kubota decided to purchase the third company in the market, Sumidagawa Iron Works Co., Ltd., which had a share of 16%.
However, the failure rate of products at the purchased plant was about 30 to 40%, and the job motivation of the employees was very low. For business reasons, the company was not merged into Kubota, but rather it remained as a separate company. Daizo Odawara (who later became President of Kubota) was sent in as an executive director and he went into the plant and retaught the workers from the basics of iron pipe manufacturing.
He also captured the hearts of the workers, improved morale and developed the company so that in profit terms it became a top, model plant in the company just three years later.
An overall view of the Sumidagawa Iron Works Co., Ltd
Water pressure inspection at the Sumidagawa Iron Works Co., Ltd.
before the take-over
Managing Director Tozo Kubota (left) and Executive Director Daizo Odawara (right)
of Sumidagawa Iron Works Co., Ltd., at a ceremony to commemorate
the 10th anniversary of the grouping
Reorganization as a limited company in 1930
The Kubota Iron Works reorganized as a limited company in the middle of the deep recession which continued after the financial crisis in Japan in 1927, and the Great Depression which started after the New York stock market collapse of October 1929. Two companies were established. The first was the Kubota Iron Works Co., Ltd., (capital: 4.5 million yen), which manufactured cast iron pipes and cast metal items.
The other was the Kubota Iron Works Machinery Co., Ltd. (capital: 1.5 million yen), which manufactured engines for industry and agriculture, machine tools, balances, etc. The method for splitting the company could be said to be the start of the autonomous Divisions.
A Kubota Iron Works Co., Ltd., share certificate
A letter entitled “an appeal to the dear employees” which
the Amagasaki plant manager distributed to the employees in 1929,
to appeal to them to overcome their difficult situation
Repeated orders from Holland for iron pipes
The export of gold from Japan was permitted in January 1930, but was prohibited again at the end of the following year. This made the exchange rate for the yen fall sharply, which made it a favorable environment for exports. The company’s first exports to Europe were achieved when an order was received from the Rotterdam Gas Company in Holland in 1932, for 3,000 tons of gas pipe.
An order for 2,500 tons of iron pipe for waterworks was also received from Groningen City in Holland in the following year. Later, the company went on to export iron pipes to Norway, Mexico, Egypt, etc. However, when the world began to move towards economic blocks from 1935, the position of Japan was again worsened, and in the end these exports were halted.
Shipments of iron pipes from the Sumidagawa Iron Works Co., Ltd.
Shipments of iron pipes from the Amagasaki plant
Opened the Sakai Plant (currently: Sakai production plant)
exclusively for the production of engines
The company had increased its production of engines after purchasing Tobata Engines in 1933, and as demand was further increasing, a plant solely for the production of engines for agriculture and industry was planned. 41,860 m2 of land was purchased in 1936 in Kamishizu, Jinsekimura, Senbokugun, Osaka Prefecture (currently Ishizu-cho, Sakai City) and the plant was constructed. It started production in November 1937.
With the construction of the new plant, Kubota aimed to be the biggest production base in the East. Over half of the new machinery was imported from Europe and America. It introduced a conveyer belt system, which came from experience in automobile manufacturing, and a centralized process management system.
As a result, the production capacity for engines doubled to 15,000 per year, accounting for 55% of total national engine production.
An overall view of the Sakai Plant
The machinery plant inside the Sakai plant
Catalogs for automatic continuous weighing machines for conveyer belts
Production of segments for the Kanmon Tunnel at the Okajima plant
The Okajima plant had been opened in 1917 to concentrate all the company’s casting departments in one place, and the company later bought up surrounding land and expanded the plant when the casting business had an upturn from 1933.
It had a hard blow when the Muroto Typhoon of September 1934 caused complete flooding of the plant, but in 1937 the main construction work was concluded, and the production had reached 10 times what it had been formerly.
The Okajima plant produced 13,000 cast iron segments between 1939 and 1943 for the construction of the Kanmon Channel Tunnel, which was a national undertaking which had started work in 1937. The segments were a first for a Japanese manufacturer. They were used as structural supports for the cylindrical structure of the tunnel, and marked the start of Kubota-made segments being used in many other tunnel construction projects.
A mold casting area inside the Okajima plant
A mold in use at the ironworks
Mr. Maeda, the Railways Minister, invited to inspect the Kanmon Tunnel segment
which had been provisionally assembled inside the Okajima plant
50 years since foundation and the construction of
the Mukogawa plant (currently: Hanshin Plant)
Over the 50 years since the foundation of the company, the casting works that had been started with 100 yen in 1890 had developed into a limited company capitalized at 24 million yen. In October 1940, over 500 people from the military, government, academic and business worlds were invited to the Sakai plant and a ceremony was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary.
Mukogawa plant was completed, which was built to increase the production of machine tools. The plant began to produce products such as air compressors and hoist machinery for mines, and the facilities were expanded many times. It was completed in 1943, as a plant exclusively for industrial machinery.
A ceremony at the Sakai plant to
commemorate the company’s 50th anniversary (October 19, 1940)
Ceremonies to mark the 50th anniversary were held at each plant
Hoist machinery for mine use being produced at the Mukogawa plant
A valve for 1,500 m waterworks
A Ward-Leonard control system planing machine produced at the Funade-cho plant
A lathe catalog (right) and a planing machine catalog (left)
Damage at the plants in the air raids
In 1945, Japan suffered widespread damage from repeated air raids. The company’s Funade-cho plant was eliminated, plants in Ichioka and Tsurumachi and the branch office in Tokyo suffered extensive damage, and all the other plants suffered damage to some extent or another.
This damage to plant equipment, the difficulties in materials procurement, and also the destruction of the distribution organization meant that the country’s mining and manufacturing industry output in August 1945 was just a tenth what it had been before the war (1934-36 average).
The company’s production for the latter half of the 1945 business year also fell to about 44% of what it had been at its peak, and the number of employees was reduced to about 2,000, a dramatic fall to about a tenth of previous numbers.
The production of tractors for land reclamation using manufacturing technology
The entrance way to the headquarters, which escaped air raid damage
