Japanese Pioneers

Masaru Ibuka was born in Tochigi Prefecture in 1908. After graduating from the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Waseda University in 1933, he entered PCL (Photo Chemistry Laboratory) Co., Ltd. In 1946, he co-founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation, later renamed Sony Corporation). He became Sony’s president in 1951, chairman in 1975 and honorary chairman in 1977. He received an honorary doctorate from Waseda University in 1979. Named a Person of Cultural Merit in 1987, he was also awarded the Order of Culture in 1992 and the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers, first class, in 1997.

Having already stood out as an ingenious inventor during his university days, Ibuka, a Waseda University student at that time, won the Prize for Excellent Invention at the Paris International Exposition in 1937 for an invention he called “Dancing Neon.” Japan was experiencing a difficult time after the Second World War when Ibuka, along with Akio Morita, established Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (later Sony Corporation) in 1946, with the aim of contributing to society through technology. They developed various new products which opened up new vistas of the future. The TR-55, the first commercial transistor radio produced in Japan, went on sale in 1955, and represented a pioneering effort in the application of transistors to consumer-electronic products. With innovative products such as the world’s first transistorized TV in 1960, the world’s first VCR for home use in 1965, and the portable stereo Walkman in 1979, Sony became one of the world’s top companies. Many of their products became star exports from Japan, and Sony played a significant role both in general post-war Japanese economic growth and in the growth of the semiconductor industry.

Ibuka was also keen on addressing child education issues from an early stage, and was awarded the Order of Culture for his work in this field in 1992.