1. Founding of a Mogami cable manufacturing business It was started from a small workshop as well as a private home of Tetsu Sato located in Ohokayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, who came from Yamagata-ken. The first business was a subcontracting job of a laying process of cables. The name of MOGAMI DENSEN (English meaning is MOGAMI CABLE) is associated with the longest river as flown in only one prefecture in Japan called "Mogami River" that flows inside of his native land Yamagata-ken. (It is one of three the most fast-flowing streams in Japan.) After being faced at financial trouble, he invited business partners Naoichi Hirabayashi and Shinei Tanaka with their stock investment to find his solutions in 1957. Introduction of new equipment such as braiding machines, serving machines and extruders led by Naoichi Hirabayashi met the time and returned to profit in two years later so that it went to plan. However, as the leadership left from the company founder little by little, antagonistic sentiment was born between the founder and later two participants, leadership team was split into two in 1964. Naoichi Hirabayashi and Shin'e Tanaka took over the majority of invested equipment and employee and customers, instead they evacuated the factory that was a private property of Tetsu Sato. The solution of the question where the factory could be moved was unrealistic that they built a building in a small field of Naoichi Hirabayashi's native land in Shiojiri City. They transported all the equipment to (elder brother of Naoichi Hirabayashi) Isao Hirabayashi's house, but none of them did not leave Tokyo including managment staffs of Naoichi Hirabayashi and Shin'e Tanaka. All of employee hated to move to Shiojiri City, as it was far away country area taking a whole day to go there from Tokyo. Farmer Isao Hirabayashi could never start a factory naturally so that both of two families (Naoichi Hirabayashi and Shin'e Tanaka) were to be adrift in the streets. 2. Start afresh Kouichi Hirabayashi, the first son of Naoichi Hirabayashi, was just about to graduate from university at that state of emergency, so he was asked to work together to make livings of two families for eight people altogether. He moved to Shiojiri City inevitably with his wife Saeko who were halfway through college, and started organizing wire harness side jobs for telephone for the time being. They made funds to build a small barrack factory, making livings of two families, and finally they could run transported machines two years later since they moved there anyhow. However, they found out it could not be profitable by subcontracting business of those wire harness that had been done in Tokyo area, considering the transportation cost between Tokyo and Shiojiri City. They were put back to square one. He dedicated himself to develop original products to get out of subcontract jobs thereafter. He got a hint from the President of Foster Electric Co., Ltd. (today's Fostex, and the name of president at the time was Shinohara who was acquainted with Naoichi Hirabayashi because they came from same Nagano Prefecture) that they had been annoyed by wire breaking accidents of microphone cables they used. And then, he succeeded to develop an economy long flex life microphone cable. It was a hairbreadth job that he could complete his own making prototype machine staying up all night just before the staff in charge of the project from Foster Electric visited the factory for inspection. Thus, he took the first step to get out of subcontract business anyhow. Research for bending plastic fatigue of electrical conductor was one of the leading edge research fields in the mechanical engineering at that time, which remained as one of the important technical basis of us. The largest contributor at this age was Tatsuko Fukazawa who retired for her lung cancer operation later on. She contributed to take apart over 200 sets of braiding machines, clean and then reconstruct them that were left out corroded in an earth floor of Isao Hirabayashi's house for long, and covered wide range of tasks from machine operation (field work) up to production control thereafter. 3. Rapid economic growth period in Japan It indicates how Japanese electric industry could develop rapidly that number of employee at Mogami factory increased to 50 from only 2 in just two years since the factory foundation in 1965. It was realy lucky that Mogami factory started just before the start of the long lasting prosperity after severe recession in 1964. In 1970, company name was changed from Chinese letter MOGAMI to Katakana MOGAMI, some of international inventions by Koichi Hirabayashi were commercially successful such as "Q-Matching Antena", and then Mogami could pay off all the debt lasted from Naoichi Hirabayashi dates. Interconnection cables for home audios, car audios, etc. were started to be produced as well as headphone cables applying bending plastic fatigue research as the market developed. While Naoichi Hirabayashi and Shin'e Tanaka stayed in Tokyo had nothing to do, then thereafter Naoichi Hirabayashi started plastic molding for connectors, and Shin'e Tanaka started lead wire cut and lead wire end treatment work establishing a new company "Mogami Lead Wire Co., Ltd." joint invested by Mogami Wire & Cable Corp. and Naoichi Hirabayashi. Plastic molding business expanded going with the tide of the times and it became one of mainstays for Mogami until the VTR age. And thereafter, overseas transfer of Japanesse electric industry was advanced, so the size of plastic mold business was greatly scale-downed. However, still this facility has been inherited to "Creatoise Co., Ltd." (company established by Yuji Hirabayashi sometime after) and subcontractors of Mogami. Mogami Lead Wire Co., Ltd. was dissolved in 1993, although this company kept almost no dividend all the time, it had been run in sound condition. Koichi Hirabayashi started to learn computer technology at this age to enhance production management like inventory control. From the very early days small business computer with only 15 word memories, and office computers liks USAC and FACOM, and through unique personal computer GP-IB applied "PET" and then UNIX Mini computer like Toshiba UX-300/UX-700, he kept studying software. That flow resulted in today's UNIX based systematization, automation, original CAD system and product control and management system. His original design GP-IB one board computer run steadily until 2006, which was developed to make it possible just by several hundred thousand Japanese Yen investment instead of buying several million Japanese Yen desk top computer at that time. That endeavour became the basis for various kinds of automated system today. Also, UL recognition (Underwriters' Laboratories: American safety standard) was started to be required for all Japanese manufacturers at this age. This recognition was undertaken by Yuji Hirabayashi (second son of Naoichi Hirabayashi) and Koichi Hirabayashi at the beginning, and some strategic new styles were projected and actually obtained. CSA (Canadian safety standard) recognition was also obtained at the same time, but CSA recognition was abandoned afterall because of low demand so that it did not pay. 4. VTR age There was an experience at the Ohokayama age that when Naoichi Hirabayashi came to a deadlock at difficult cable lay process working under a subcontract, it was solved by Koichi Hirabayashi applied differential geometry which was not known popularlly then, Mogami could receive relatively hard type cable lay process jobs thereafter. One of it was video camera cables for JVC laboratory, who was developing VTR for consumer market when there was a small market only for business use. When they established VTR Division as the consumer VTR market expanded, Mogami was appointed as their main supplier for cables, anticipating our technology capability. We think it was a plucky decision for them, as they selected such a short history company among many established cable companies then. We had been kept with production increase thereafter, as we supplied both of interconnection cables and internal wiring cables for their VTR and the development speed of VTR market was rapid. Our turnover expanded steeply, while plastic mold technology was succeeded to Yuji Hirabayashi and VTR became the top market for it. The largest contributor at this age were Yasuhiro Nakano, key person at quality control, and Tokio Kobayashi, who made great efforts for production and subcontrator control. Especially, Yasuhiro Nakano built up the basis of quality assurance system for Mogami thereafter. While in this period, some operations were splited to bring up next generation executives, MIT (the third son of Naoichi Hirabayashi), CREATOISE (the second son of Naoichi Hirabayashi), and GOMI WORKS led by Kenji Gomi remained today, and GOMI WORKS became the core of the bulk cable production. GOMI WORKS started production at owner's home premises, developed satisfactorily and moved to Alps Industrial Park thereafter. However, the time when they moved there overlapped the time when overseas transfer of Japanesse electric industry was advanced so that they were faced at sales decline, and moved into inside of Mogami Wire & Cable Corp. factory plant, withdrawing from Alps Industrial Park. 5. Audio cable Mogami name became to be known widely in audio field other than electric manufactures, especially in hi-fi market, in 1977 by unexpected reasons. It was that world astonished issue that "sound is changed by a cable transmitted through". This fact was noticed by Akehiko Kaneda of Akita University and hi-fi audio critic Saburo Egawa independently at almost same time, and reported in hi-fi magazines. Those magazine articles are the very origin of this issue. Although all of audio manufacturers in Japan like Sony, JVC, Trio etc. carried out taking up the stance for development of piggybacking products setting aside theoretical research, because it looked so absurd assertion for Koichi Hirabayashi at that time that they (Kaneda and Egawa) insisted the transmitted sound is changed by skin effect of the used electrical cables, he started research himself for the purpose of denying it. However, as he thought about it deeply, he got the feeling that their assertion might be correct experimentally as well as theoretically so that he had to research it seriously. This led him a very interesting discovery as well as academically, and brought up technical development was very high for Mogami, but hi-fi audio cable market was corrupted by commercialism almost same as deception and misunderstanding spread out large, Mogami's hi-fi specialized products became limited supply only for small part of audio enthusiasts today. But, this research became one of the fighting strengths in the proaudio market for us thereafter. 6. Transit into international proaudio market Thus, business condition of Mogami expanded smoothly up to the peak of the VTR market in 1987. And then we were faced at a critical turning point when the VTR market turned to scale down conincident with overseas transfer of Japanesse electric industry so that we had to develop a new market. The largest contributor at this stage was Ryuzo Hirabayashi (third son of Naoichi Hirabayashi) with his company "MIT INC." (stands for Mogami International Trading) who had committed to export for long, he found a way out today's proaudio market. There are lots of colleague who shared one difficulty after another since Shiojiri factory was founded including those who passed away already. Contribution by those two member is outstanding among them, who are Yasuhiro Nakano, an executive exerting himself in the post of quality control today, and Kenji Gomi, leading majority of today's production site. 7. Reconstruction of Shiojiri Factory/Plant Factory building in Shiojiri City that had been extended by used timber since 1967 became too old for work so that the risk of collapse by fallen snow in winter increased. Therefore, overall reconstruction of the factory/plant was started to be considered. Since it had to be a reconstruction while keeping operation in the same site, there were many difficult obstacles in both of design and constructing. They were settled by the endeavour of Kitano Construction Ltd. to considerablly easy to use form and all the manufacturing process was moved to a new building in November, 2002, one year after the start of the construction. We carried out designing computer control of the manufacturing facilities and plant accessories in parallel with building design by this opportunity for advancing thorough automation and saving energy that had been thought over by Koichi Hirabayashi for long until then. All of design, production, installation and software were made in-house based on Unix OS so that it could be done in extremely low cost overall. The idea that everything is set in LAN is a quite advanced technology even today. Because our factory was divided up to eight buildings before reconstruction, transportation of materials and goods in process was hard so that we had hard time in controling them. Everything became much easier in today's new building since all of manufacturing process can be set in one flat floor. Especially, it is a great harvest for us that the speed of finding out production troubles and their solution became extremely fast. Toyoda style MONOZUKURI KAIZEN (constant change for the better of creative design and manufacturing) has been greatly advanced, making use of one floor condition. Real estate tax was increased by JPY 2.6 million per year and insurance was decreased by JPY 0.356 million per year compared to the old building time.