Venture Action

Engineering Spirit

Makes Impossible Possible

Hosoda Electric is a small manufacturing business dealing with transformers in the district of Ohta-ku in Tokyo.  Besides the main business, the company utilizes the technology they have accumulated thus far to make products that contribute to society.

Mr. Hosoda, born in 1944, describes himself as a “kid who always liked to produce things”.   When he was young, he ran into trouble with the local police office after creating a toy gun made from umbrella frames and bicycle bearings.   Although he grew up farming, he always loved fixing small appliances and working with electronics.  His neighbor suggested he quit farming in favor of becoming an electrician after he fixed his vacuum bulb radio.  Following this suggestion, Mr. Hosada moved to Tokyo at the age of 15 to pursue a career as an electrician. 

He became an employee of a subsidiary transformer company of Meiden-sha.  The company employed 800 employees, 300 of which lived in a dormitory.   Mr. Hosoda wanted to compete with the college grads, so he went to school and studied at night.  He was told by the president of Meiden-sha that if he studied transformers, he would never lose his job as long as there was electricity in this world, so he continued studying about the transformers.

However, during the recession after the Tokyo Olympics, the subsidiary company went bankrupt.  In order to further his expertise, he worked for companies and factories in Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi, and Stanley Electric.  Then, at the age of 25, he started his own business ? Hosoda Electric ? in his one room apartment.  By the age of 31, he already had his own factory.  Mr. Hosoda, with his continuous effort, became famous as a high voltage transformer engineer.  

Then, many difficult jobs came from many big companies.  For example, a power supply that could suffice the high voltage requirement for spattering equipment at that time was not available domestically, so the equipment makers had to purchase expensive power supplies from the United States  Such problem solving requests came to Mr. Hosoda.  In addition, he completed the developments of numerous challenging requests such as power supplies for ATS for Shinkansen (the bullet train), MRI, and copiers.  Despite his great efforts and innovative developments, large corporations would immediately transfer mass production to companies in other regions that could do it at a cheaper cost.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hosoda maintained a confident attitude.  His philosophy was, “If large companies are not in good shape, there is no business for small companies, and vise versa.  Without small companies, there can be no big corporations.  Further, it is always a fun challenge to confront new and difficult project requirements one after another.”  Such a message would not have been possible without his confidence in technology.

After Mr. Hosoda turned 50, his son, who was working for a major electronics corporation, came back home and said, “I want to be like my dad and become an engineer”.  So he let his son run the business and he decided to develop new products using his technological expertise.  In the past, Mr. Hosoda teamed up with big corporations to develop new technologies. Now he was by himself and no longer in the transformer business, but in new areas acquiring new patents.  At that time, NOx emissions form diesel engine trucks were a major environmental problem.  In general, existing solutions used filters at the end of exhaust pipes.  Instead of filtering, he came to the conclusion that the full combustion of fuel was a much more efficient solution.  Not only would it reduce the emissions of unwanted gases, but it would also improve mileage.  So Mr. Hosoda thought about how to achieve this.  He hypothesized that since water activates by passing through a strong magnetic field, a similar effect could be achieved by passing fuel through a strong magnetic field as well.  He researched, tested and obtained results the yielded less NOx emission and more mileage.  He made the product and began to market it.  The results were great, but some authorities challenged and criticized his development.  He defeated such counter opinions by gathering more data, conducting more tests, and making new improvements of the product.