was a Japanese businessman. A graduate of the

Imperial College of Engineering The Imperial College of Engineering (工部大学校, ''Kōbudaigakkō'') was a Japanese institution of higher education that was founded during the Meiji Era. The college was established under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Works for ...

(Kobu Daigaku) in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

, he worked as a

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

engineer for the Japanese government.

Biography

Iwarde left

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

in 1886 and traveled to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. He was introduced to Charles Batchelor, an assistant of

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

. Iwadare was hired to work in an Edison facility in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

at Goerck Street. Iwadare was transferred to

Edison Machine Works The Edison Machine Works was a manufacturing company set up to produce dynamos, large electric motors, and other components of the electrical illumination system being built in the 1880s by Thomas A. Edison in New York City. History The need fo ...

in Schenectady,

in January 1887. Iwadare returned to Japan, hoping to participate in building the electrical industry in Japan. He first joined Osaka Dento (Osaka Electric Lamp Company) as an electrical engineer, and after eight years resigned from his post to start his own business as a general sales agent in Japan for

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...

and

Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...

companies. In 1895

wished to expand their telephone equipment sales business in Japan and proposed a limited partnership with Iwadare. Their representative was Walter Tenney Carleton. Iwadare accepted the proposal and a new firm was created in August, 1898. In 1899, changes to treaties between Japan and Western countries went into effect. The limited partnership created in 1898 was restructured into the

joint stock company A joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares (certificates of ownership). Shareholders a ...

, Nippon Electric Co. Ltd. Western Electric held 54% of the stock. Iwadare was named managing director of what is now known as

NEC Corporation is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network solut ...

. He became chairman of the board in 1926.NEC 1984, p. 24.

Footnotes

References

*NEC Corporation, ''NEC Corporation, The First 80 Years, 1984, ''. *Mark Mason, ''Foreign Direct Investment and Japanese Economic Development, 1899-1931, BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC HISTORY, Second Series, Volume Sixteen, 1987''.

External links

Kibataro Oki, Pioneer of Telecommunications Industry
Japanese businesspeople NEC people 1857 births 1941 deaths {{Japan-business-bio-stub