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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