Matsui Shikiso Chemical Co., Ltd was founded in 1923 by Kenji Matsui when he opened a paint and dye shop in

Kyoto, Japan Kyoto ( or ; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it the ninth-most pop ...

. Decades later, in 1948, the company started producing

crayon A crayon (or wax pastel) is a stick of pigmented wax used for writing or drawing. Wax crayons differ from pastels, in which the pigment is mixed with a dry binder (material), binder such as gum arabic, and from oil pastels, where the binder is a ...

s and painting materials. By the 1950s, Matsui Shikiso Chemical discontinued their crayons and painting materials lines to focus on offering water based inks and pigments targeted principally to the textile screen printing industry. In the early 1980s, Matsui Shikiso Chemical developed Chromicolor, the first thermochromic paints,

thermochromic ink Thermochromic ink (also called thermochromatic ink) is a type of dye that changes color in response to a change in temperature. It was first used in the 1970s in novelty toys like mood rings, but has found some practical uses in things such as therm ...

s, and thermochromic plastics, broadcast on Japan's national public channel,

NHK , also known by its Romanization of Japanese, romanized initialism NHK, is a Japanese public broadcasting, public broadcaster. It is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television licence, television license fee. NHK ope ...

(Nippon Hosoku Kaisha), introducing

thermochromism Thermochromism is the property of substances to change color due to a change in temperature. A mood ring is an example of this property used in a consumer product although thermochromism also has more practical uses, such as baby bottles, which c ...

to the world. Matsui's continued success led to establishing a subsidiary in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

named Matsui and Company, Inc. to better service their growing international clientele. By the end of the decade, Matsui and Company, Inc. changed its name to Matsui International Co., Inc., to capitalize on international markets. Soon after the establishment, Matsui entered the heat transfer business, under the trademark Unimark, USA. Matsui Shikiso manufactured the color dyes for

Hypercolor Hypercolor was a line of clothing, mainly T-shirts and shorts, that changed color with heat. They were manufactured by Generra Sportswear Company of Seattle and marketed in the United States as Generra Hypercolor or Generra Hypergrafix and els ...

shirts. In recent years, Matsui Chemical has focused more on developing digital ink to enable printing and textile companies to streamline their production. Their new ARTJET heat transfer printers reduce the labor involved in the printing process through digital control configurations. This simplified, digitized process means engineers and expert skillsets are not longer necessary for print production. Yoshiyuki Yasuda is the President of Matsui Shikiso Chemical Co., Ltd.

References

External links

Matsui Shikiso Chemical Co., Ltd

Matsui International Co., Ltd.

Unimark USA
{{Primary sources, date=October 2007 Chemical companies of Japan