Oki Kibataro

Kibataro Oki was born to a farming family in Hiroshima prefecture. From a young age he was taught to produce and repair arms for the Aki clan. He was also apprenticed to a silversmith, and within a few years became a first-class silversmith.

Kibataro left his home province for Tokyo in 1874. There he was introduced to Ryuzo Harada, manager of the School of Technology under the Telegraph Bureau in the Ministry of Industry to handle the nation’s telegraph affairs. Ryuzo saw the Kibataro’s potential and took him under his wing. Not long after Kibataro joined the Telegraph Bureau, his supervisors began to recognize the unique skills he had developed as a silversmith. One result was that in April 1874 he was officially employed as an apprentice in Ryuzo Harada’s School of Technology.

Kibataro further advanced and was promoted in 1875 to advanced technical apprentice, 14th class. He continued to develop rapidly afterward, and was promoted to 9th class in 1877 and subsequently to 8th class in 1878. In the spring of 1877 Kibataro married Take Kano, a young woman eight years his junior. Take was the daughterof Sadanobu Kano, head of the famous Kano family of artists formerly patronized by the Tokugawa shogunate.

Around this same time Kibataro Oki and his colleagues organized a research group called the “Yarukisha.” They worked together to develop materials and components for use in communications equipment. Kibataro Oki, for example, designed a paper-made Daniel cell and lacquer-coated electric wire. At the beginning of the 1880s Kibataro decided to go into private sector and submitted his resignation to the Telegraph Bureau in January 1880.

Oki founded Meikosha, Ltd., in January 1881, a manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. While struggling to procure the funds needed to run Meikosha, he gradually raised the company’s level of technology and made the efforts needed to cultivate the newly emerging communications equipment market. He responded perceptively to new business opportunities and Meikosha filled the early demand from customers in the telephone business, thus moving ahead of other companies in the same line of business to become a leading communications equipment manufacturer.