|
 Kawasaki
Heavy
Industries has come a long way since it was founded in 1876 by Shozo
Kawasaki.
Born
in
Kagoshima
to a kimono
merchant, Shozo Kawasaki became a tradesman at the age of 17 in Nagasaki, the only place
in Japan
then open to the
West. He started a shipping business in Osaka
at 27, which
failed when his cargo ship sank during a storm.
In
1869, he joined a company handling sugar from Ryukyu (currently
Okinawa
Prefecture), established by
a Kagoshima
samurai,
and in 1893, researched Ryukyu sugar and sea routes to Ryukyu at the
request of the Ministry of Finance.
 Having
experienced many sea accidents in his life, Kawasaki
deepened his trust in Western ships because they were more
spacious,
stable and faster than typical Japanese ships. At the same time, he
became very interested in the modern shipbuilding industry.
 In
April 1876, supported by Masayoshi Matsukata, the Vice Minister of
Finance, who was from the same province as Kawasaki, he established
Kawasaki Tsukiji Shipyard on borrowed land from the government
alongside the Sumidagawa River, Tsukiji Minami-Iizaka-cho (currently
Tsukiji 7-chome, Chuo-ku), Tokyo, a major step forward as a
shipbuilder.
In 1894, he was appointed executive vice president of Japan Mail
Steam-Powered Shipping Company, and succeeded in opening a sea route
to Ryukyu and transporting sugar to mainland Japan.
Cargo-Passenger
Ship Iyomaru
In 1897, Kawasaki
Dockyard completed a cargo-passenger ship, Iyomaru (727 GT),
its first ship after becoming a publicly traded company. During the
10 years of private management between 1886 and 1896, the Company
built 80 new ships, including six steel ships such as Tamamaru
(about 570 GT). Since the first steel ship was built in Japan in
1890, ship material had rapidly modernized from iron to steel. The
beginning of Kawasaki Dockyard is thus the beginning of Japan's
modern shipbuilding industry.
Shipbuilding
Buoyant with Successive Deliveries and New Contracts
CONSTRUCTION OF THE DRY-DOCK
1902 - Mikawamaru of Nippon Yusen
Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK Line)
enters the dry dock, the first ship to be repaired in the dock.
Shozo
Kawasaki had fully realized that the Company's shipyard needed
a drastic increase in capacity since Kawasaki Dockyard was
established in
Kobe
City, Hyogo
Prefecture. He
planned to construct a dry dock by reclaiming land next to the
shipyard. In 1892, a land survey began, and in 1895, boring
tests were carried out. After
the incorporation of Kawasaki Dockyard, Kojiro Matsukata
pursued the plan.
Construction
work faced rough going due to the extremely weak foundations
of the site on the Minatogawa
River
delta.
After a couple of failures, a new technique was adopted to
harden the underwater foundation by pouring concrete. Six
years later in 1902, the dry dock was completed at last,
costing three times as much and taking three times longer than
the construction of a dock under normal conditions.
Size
of the dry dock:
Length:
130 m, width: 15.7 m, depth: 5.5 m
Maximum size of ships that can be docked: 6,000 GT
The
dry dock (currently No. 1 Dock, Kobe Shipyard) was listed as a
Registered Tangible Cultural Asset of Japan in 1998. |
Today Kawasaki
is a multi-national corporation with more than fifty holdings
(manufacturing plants, distributions centers, and marketing and sales
headquarters) in
most major cities around the world.
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Products
of Kawasaki Heavy Industries:
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| Rolling
Stock
|
Construction
Machinery |
| Chrushing
Machinery |
Aerospace |
| Gas
Turbines |
Machinery |
| Plant
Engineering |
Industrial
Equipment & Metal Structures |
Motorcycles
/ Jet Ski Watercraft
/ Gasoline Engines / Power Products |
Industrial
Robots |
|
Photocatalyst
Coating Agent "Folium" |
Precision
Machinery |
|
Snowplows |
|
Klik
op het logo
om naar verschillende filmpjes te kijken over Kawasaki Good Times
World in Kobe, Japan. Dit is een entertainment centrum waar
men kan zien en beleven waarmee het enorme
Kawasaki concern zich zoal bezig houdt.
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Nieuws
van het Kawasaki Concern: |
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News
3 October 2006
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News
4 October 2006
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News
9 November 2006
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News
28 November 2006
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News
13 November 2006
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News
30 November 2006
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News
14 November 2006
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News
4 December 2006
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News
20 November 2006
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News
28 December 2006
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