Japan's First Incandescent Lamps

Ichisuke Fujioka, a cofounder of our company, visited the United States in 1884 where he thoroughly observed the manufacturing process of incandescent lamps invented by Thomas Edison, and decided to start manufacturing Japanese-made light bulbs.

In 1890 he founded Hakunetsu-sha in Kyobashi Yariya-cho in order to make and sell incandescent lamps.
The first president was Shoichi Miyoshi, who was from the same part of the country as Fujioka (present-day Iwakuni city, Yamaguchi).
Fujioka and Miyoshi first made filaments from cotton thread; however, hearing Edison had used Japanese bamboo instead, they manufactured incandescent light bulbs incorporating bamboo filaments for the first time in Japan.