MINASE CREATES ALL ITS CASES IN ITS FACTORY IN THE AKITA COUNTRYSIDE . THEY MAKE CASES OF STAINLESS STEEL , GOLD AND PALLADIUM .
From left : Davido on a steel bracelet , Horizon on rubber and the newest Horizon for women , which arrives this Fall .
After arriving at Narita airport ( important travel tip , Narita is technically not in Tokyo , but in Chiba prefecture . Sort of like Newark airport for New York ). From Narita you have a few options for getting into the city ( ideally Tokyo station ) so that you can then catch the first thing smoking ( or in this case , humming ) up north to Akita-ken .
Now although the Shinkansen ( bullet train ) is fast , it is not time travel fast . Generally , the trip takes about four hours or so . And once you get to Akita station ? Well , you have about an hour ’ s drive .
What I ’ m getting at here , is that it would have been EASY for Minase to set- up shop in the Tokyo or really any other big city such as Nagoya , Osaka or Hiroshima . But there were two very good reasons to put their factories in Akita . The first one is obvious . When Minase was created , the government was giving very strong encouragement and favorable terms to open businesses and create jobs in Yuzawa . But the second one is something that you can ’ t really understand until you spend some time with the team at Minase . And in Minase ’ s case , I would call it the wa factor .
And just what is wa ? Well this is challenging because literally translated , it means sum . But when we take into consideration Japanese culture , and more importantly , company culture , it can take on the meaning of “ harmony ”. So , when I take these two definitions together , I tend to think that it means that harmony exists , and it is a positive thing for everyone involved .
When you visit the place where Minase makes their watches , you are pretty
quickly aware of the differences between the tone or atmosphere of the place when compared to some of the factories you might encounter in Switzerland and Germany . More on this as we go on , but suffice it to say , it is pleasantly different . You will not hear shouting , you will not see pouting . You get the very strong impression that everyone , from the person just starting out , to the long serving managers , are there because they actually want to be .
Visit a Swiss watch factory and it ’ s a 50 / 50 proposition that the watch maker will let you observe them , let alone photograph and ask questions about what they do . At Minase they are eager and enthusiastic about what they do , how they do it , and perhaps most telling - why they do it .
A BETTER MOUSETRAP
Minase did not start out as a watch manufacturer but as a company that made cases and other components ( OEM ) for other Japanese companies . But it actually started even earlier . Because before they did that , they were known ( and the other half of the company still is known ) as Kyowa , a toolmaker . Kyowa was founded in 1963 by Koichi Suzuki , the father of the current president , Tsuyoshi Suzuki . The Kyowa side of the business is a really impressive operation , and still going strong . And it is from this tool manufacturing that Minase really began . It ’ s important to understand that there are brands that pay to have an assembler , well , assemble their watches . And there are brands that actually make watches . Minase belongs to the second group .
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