Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. started as a small firm established in 1953 by Heihachiro Horiuchi who studied under the guidance of Dr. Kenjiro Takayanagi now respectfully called the “father of Japanese television.” Since then, we have inherited the “photoelectric technology” developed by Dr. Takayanagi for converting light into electrical signals as well as “the spirit of pursuing unknown and unexplored realms” which led him to the achievement of displaying the Japanese character “イ” on a cathode-ray tube for the first time in the world. Over the past 65 years, we have been consistently engaged in developing photoelectric devices and their application products while moving forward along with the continuing advances in technologies of light.
Just as electrons and electronics brought immeasurable richness to our lives in the 20th century, the 21th century will be the age of photons (particles of light) and photonics. Spurred by the unlimited possibilities of light, photonics technology is increasingly applied in a wide range of fields. However, the interaction of light with matter is still hardly understood at the present time. By pursuing the ultimate limits of photoelectric conversion technology to approach the true nature of light, Hamamatsu Photonics has been challenging the unknown where no one has yet explored, with the aim of creating new industries by utilizing light and acquiring new knowledges.
Dr. Kenjiro Takayanagi (1899 to 1990)
Dr. Kenjiro Takayanagi - “Father of Japanese television” Dr. Kenjiro Takayanagi was born in Hamamatsu, Japan in 1899, and graduated from the industrial teacher training school attached to the Tokyo Kuramae Higher Technical School (now Tokyo Institute of Technology). In 1924, he returned to his hometown Hamamatsu and took a post as an assistant professor at Hamamatsu Industrial High School (now the Faculty of Engineering of Shizuoka University), and at the same time he started research on television technology. Being encouraged by the school philosophy “Freedom and Enlightenment,” Dr. Takayanagi’s research team succeeded for the first time in the world in displaying an image (Japanese character “イ”) on an electronic television screen. This was in 1926, a mere 2 years after he had started his research work.
Heihachiro Horiuchi, the founding president of our company, studied as a student directly under Dr. Takayanagi and was guided by him at Hamamatsu Industrial High School. Dr. Takayanagi spoke to his students from time to time saying things like, “What is the purpose of that technology? Will technology prove beneficial to our lives? Make these questions a fundamental part of your research at all times.” He also admonished us not to “learn for learning’s sake” and “research for research’s sake” and always struggled to link the acts of learning and research to value in human life and human society. He never changed this philosophy throughout his whole life.
The Japanese character “イ”displayed on a cathode-ray tube.
(The photograph shows a device reproducing the character in the Hamamatsu Science Museum.)
As Kenjiro Takayanagi was pursuing his research and was engaged in developing technology that would serve society ten to twenty years in the future, he occasionally had a mental image of the goddess of fortune, and always saw her portrayed as a beautiful woman with full bangs, but no hair at the back of her head. Playing with this idea, Takayanagi imagined that, in order to seize the goddess of fortune, one would have to be one step ahead of her, wait for her to catch up, and then turn around and seize her by the forelocks. Applying this whimsical fancy to his work, Takayanagi resolved to always be one step ahead and have the technology ready when the opportunity to apply it came within reach. Hamamatsu Photonics carries on this spirit today, constantly striving to be ready and waiting when opportunity arises.
Heihachiro Horiuchi (1915 to 1997) with a vidicon in hand.
Being fascinated by the wonders of light since his elementary school days, Heihachiro Horiuchi entered the Electrical Department of Hamamatsu Industrial High School (now the Faculty of Engineering of Shizuoka University) where his hero Professor Takayanagi was teaching and was greatly inspired by the professor’s philosophy called Takayanagi-ism. Horiuchi decided to follow this “path of light” by providing society with the means or namely products that would make effective use of light and he worked on developing photoelectric devices that convert light into electrical signals and even now this basic technology still supports our work.
At the time that the words “optical industry” did not even exist, I thought of making a living by starting a company to produce and sell photoelectric devices. Some of my seniors were worried and advised me, “Those things are like works of art and won’t make any business profits from the viewpoint of both marketability and yield rate. So should give up on this dream.” However, I had heard a story during my elementary school days: “The light from Polaris also called the North Star travels through space for 800 light-years before reaching us on Earth.” Since then, I have been totally fascinated by “light” and also attracted to the Professor Takayanagi’s research on television and my thoughts resonated with the spirit of Takayanagi-ism. All of this had already led me to the decision that I would go my own way to pursue the path of light even if I didn’t have enough food, clothing or shelter, so there was nothing to hold me back from following my dream. Light is the source of our lives and also greatly relates to our mental activities. Nevertheless, light is nearly totally unknown to us. I then established the management philosophy underlying a way to understand the nature of light and provide society with a means that allows us to make more use of light.
Teruo Hiruma, Former Chairman and CEO(1926 to 2018)
Speech at the 24th Hamamatsu Conference in 2007
Teruo Hiruma is one of the founding members and the second president of our company. After graduating in 1947 from the Machinery Department of Hamamatsu Industrial High School in the old education system (now the Faculty of Engineering of Shizuoka University), he established “Hamamatsu TV Co., Ltd.” along with Heihachiro Horiuchi and Norio Hanyu in 1953. Then, in 1978, Teruo Hiruma became the second president. He strongly pushed toward the challenge of opening up the unknown and unexplored which was taken over from Dr. Takayanagi and Heihachiro Horiuchi, and as a result our company has grown into a worldwide company leading the pack in photonics technology. In 1983, the company name was changed to “Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.” Then, in 2004, Teruo Hiruma became Chairman and Representative Director of Hamamatsu Photonics. Since 2017, he has served as honorary chairman of Hamamatsu Photonics.
Today, the application of light is ubiquitous in every field around us. Each field has become a large market and created its own specific industries. We have gained a great deal of knowledge through photonics technology in measuring the ultimate limits of light and its applied research especially in cutting-edge research fields. Based on this knowledge amassed over many years, we are aiming ourselves to create new industries by using photonics technology.
As long as we work in the field of light and photonics, we have an important role to play in pursuing and revealing the possibilities of light in this century. There are lots of things to do. Don’t say, I CAN’T, instead say, I WILL TRY.
It looks like you're in the . If this is not your location, please select the correct region or country below.
You're headed to Hamamatsu Photonics website for JP (English). If you want to view an other country's site, the optimized information will be provided by selecting options below.
In order to use this website comfortably, we use cookies. For cookie details please see our cookie policy.
This website or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in this cookie policy. By closing the cookie warning banner, scrolling the page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to the use of cookies.
Hamamatsu uses cookies in order to enhance your experience on our website and ensure that our website functions.
You can visit this page at any time to learn more about cookies, get the most up to date information on how we use cookies and manage your cookie settings. We will not use cookies for any purpose other than the ones stated, but please note that we reserve the right to update our cookies.
For modern websites to work according to visitor’s expectations, they need to collect certain basic information about visitors. To do this, a site will create small text files which are placed on visitor’s devices (computer or mobile) - these files are known as cookies when you access a website. Cookies are used in order to make websites function and work efficiently. Cookies are uniquely assigned to each visitor and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to the visitor. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to a visitor’s device.
Cookies do various jobs which make the visitor’s experience of the internet much smoother and more interactive. For instance, cookies are used to remember the visitor’s preferences on sites they visit often, to remember language preference and to help navigate between pages more efficiently. Much, though not all, of the data collected is anonymous, though some of it is designed to detect browsing patterns and approximate geographical location to improve the visitor experience.
Certain type of cookies may require the data subject’s consent before storing them on the computer.
This website uses two types of cookies:
This website uses cookies for following purposes:
Cookies help us help you. Through the use of cookies, we learn what is important to our visitors and we develop and enhance website content and functionality to support your experience. Much of our website can be accessed if cookies are disabled, however certain website functions may not work. And, we believe your current and future visits will be enhanced if cookies are enabled.
There are two ways to manage cookie preferences.
If you don’t want to receive cookies, you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it or you can refuse cookies altogether. You can also delete cookies that have already been set.
If you wish to restrict or block web browser cookies which are set on your device then you can do this through your browser settings; the Help function within your browser should tell you how. Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of desktop browsers.
Occasionally, we may use internet tags (also known as action tags, single-pixel GIFs, clear GIFs, invisible GIFs and 1-by-1 GIFs) at this site and may deploy these tags/cookies through a third-party advertising partner or a web analytical service partner which may be located and store the respective information (including your IP-address) in a foreign country. These tags/cookies are placed on both online advertisements that bring users to this site and on different pages of this site. We use this technology to measure the visitors' responses to our sites and the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns (including how many times a page is opened and which information is consulted) as well as to evaluate your use of this website. The third-party partner or the web analytical service partner may be able to collect data about visitors to our and other sites because of these internet tags/cookies, may compose reports regarding the website’s activity for us and may provide further services which are related to the use of the website and the internet. They may provide such information to other parties if there is a legal requirement that they do so, or if they hire the other parties to process information on their behalf.
If you would like more information about web tags and cookies associated with on-line advertising or to opt-out of third-party collection of this information, please visit the Network Advertising Initiative website http://www.networkadvertising.org.
We use third-party cookies (such as Google Analytics) to track visitors on our website, to get reports about how visitors use the website and to inform, optimize and serve ads based on someone's past visits to our website.
You may opt-out of Google Analytics cookies by the websites provided by Google:
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en
As provided in this Privacy Policy (Article 5), you can learn more about opt-out cookies by the website provided by Network Advertising Initiative:
http://www.networkadvertising.org
We inform you that in such case you will not be able to wholly use all functions of our website.
Close