It is obvious that you all know when you heard a word of Kawasaki. Your mind will describe it as ‘motor racing’. This motor is very famous in the world, especially among the women who are still young, of course, their target is to get a boyfriend who has Kawasaki Ninja, a stylish motorbike from this manufacturer.
Kawasaki is one of the most famous manufacturing companies in the world, and again, this company is from Japan, the country which is famous for transportation technology. Most of the products that produced by this company are automotive heavy equipment, aerospace equipment and several things that used for sophisticated vessels and robots in this era.
The company is very active in many industries such as space and aviation projects, energy, rail, and shipping, also vehicles. Anyway, do you know who the person behind Kawasaki’s company? Who founded this company and why the name is Kawasaki?
Kawasaki is a name taken from the founder, namely Kawasaki Shozo. Shozo was born on December 2, 1837, in Kagoshima area. In his young age, Shozo was not living with his family and went to sell kimono in Nagasaki city. When he was 27 years old, Shozo started selling and shipping his product to other cities. At that time, the first location that became the target to send his products was Osaka. Unfortunately, he had to face an accident, the cargo ship carrying merchandise drowned in the sea because of the storm that hit the ship.
In early 1869, Shozo tried to join a sugar company that handles sugar from the islands of Japan, Ryukyu. Finally, Shozo began researching the sugar from the islands and looking for a good sea route to the islands. In 1894, Shozo was appointed as executive vice president of the Japan Mail Steam company which the company’s line was in shipping services. Shozo succeeded to open the sea route to the Ryukyu archipelago and transport sugar from various regions in Japan.
But unfortunately, a disaster came to him again. The ship that carried sugar were drowned by waves and storms. This is the beginning of his belief ships made by America or Europe was more stable than Japanese ships. From the accidents and Shozo’s belief, he became interested in the modern ship industry. Finally, in 1876, because of the support from Japan’s deputy finance minister, Matsukata Masayoshi, Shozo established a shipbuilding company under the name Kawasaki Tsukiji Shipyard in Tokyo.
It was the beginning of the career and the development of Kawasaki’s company. And the first industry as the production was a ship that then it was developed into a locomotives company, aircraft, motorcycles, missiles and military equipment that was in World War II at that time.
After Kawasaki Shozo passed away on December 2, 1912, in Japan, his company was later renamed from Kawasaki Tsukiji Shipyard to Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Since that time, the company’s shareholders began to develop the scope of the Kawasaki’s company from only ship producing company to the production of various technologies. Even the company succeeded to create a space plane which was called Aerospace.
So, this company did not only produce motor, but also various technological equipment. Even the Kawasaki’s company also produced heavy equipment transportation and the product had the good quality as same as Caterpillar. Kawasaki first time produced motorbike named Meihatsu 60cc 2 Stroke and 150cc 4 Stroke which the design was adopted from BMW technology from Germany.
Kawasaki also produced Scooter in the post-World War II era, but the scooter that made by this company was able to survive only short time due to the high competition with Fuji Rabit company and Mitsubishi which at that time was the largest Scooter industry company in Japan.
Then the company was again producing a second motorcycle, Meguro Motorcycles. This motor was the most senior in the production compared with Honda, Yamaha, and Suzuki manufacturer. This motor was the oldest in production by the State of Japan. This was the reason that made Kawasaki’s company is always growing every year. Even today Kawasaki has many branches all over the world. And of course, the product price of this brand shows the quality that given on the motorbike.
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