- Woodcraft: Industrial technologies related to
woodcraft developed with good quality lumber availablein abundance,highly
skilled craftsmen,andmanagerial resources refined in the castle
town from the Edoperiod (1603-1867).These technologies have in
turn developed into modern industries manufacturing such products
as clocks, train carriages and aircraft.
- Yarn: Back in the Edo period, the Owari, Chita
and Mikawa areas were already the country’s largest centers of
cotton textile production, and later during theMeijiperiod (1868-1912),these
areas werecalled ” the textile kingdom” with flourishing cotton,
wool and synthetic fiber industries. The yarn-making and textile
industries developed in Nagoya and it was in 1890 that Sakichi
Toyoda, founder of the current Toyota group, invented the first
automatic loom in Japan.With funds earned from exporting this
technology to England, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,Kiichiro
Toyoda, Sakichi’s son, started R&D to build thefirst automobiles
in Japan.Around 1930,theMayor of Nagoya Isao Oiwa (who was from
a Toyota area called Sanage) proposed the ”Detroit of the East”
initiativeto createan automobileindustry based on earlier industries.
- Clay: Since antiquity, the pottery industry
developed in differentparts aroundNagoya.With this background,
the traditional industrial technology evolved intothemodern ceramics
industry,which has expanded into fineceramics,environment-relatedand
many other industrial fields.
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Steel (Machinery): Around 1910, Momosuke Fukuzawa, later called
the ”King of Electric Power,”started the development of electric
power resources along the Kiso River, which helped the steel industry
to progress through the use of electric furnaces.Meanwhile, the
traditional technology for creating ”wadokei” or Japanese clocks
(sophisticated and hand-made precision instruments) led to the
development of elaborate ”karakuri” automatons in the Edo period.
This helped the steel-based machine industry to grow in the Meiji
period. Later, the machine industry of Nagoya developed in synergy
with the woodcraft, yarn and clay industries to make the area
one of the largest production centers of machine tools and industrial
robots in the world.
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