Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation is a Japanese multinational electronics firm based in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. Its wide-ranging offerings span power systems, industrial and social infrastructure, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors, hard disk drives, printers, batteries, lighting, and IT solutions like quantum cryptography. In the past, it was also a major producer of personal computers, consumer electronics, home appliances, and medical equipment. The name Toshiba comes from its earlier title, Tokyo Shibaura Denki K.K., which itself resulted from the 1939 merger of Shibaura Seisaku-sho (founded in 1875) and Tokyo Denki (founded in 1890). The company officially adopted the name Toshiba Corporation in 1978. With a long history and broad operations, Toshiba is a well-known name in Japan and has been seen as a symbol of the nation's postwar technological strength. As a semiconductor maker and the inventor of flash memory, it ranked among the top ten chip firms until its flash memory unit was spun off as Kioxia in the late 2010s. Toshiba also had a notable presence in personal computers, releasing the first mass-market laptop in 1985 and later becoming a major laptop vendor; it left the PC business in 2020 after transferring that division to Dynabook Inc.

The company ran into trouble in the 2010s due to a widely publicized accounting scandal that damaged its reputation, and the 2017 bankruptcy of its nuclear energy subsidiary Westinghouse. These events forced the conglomerate to sell off several underperforming businesses, largely ending its century-long involvement in consumer markets. After a proposal to split the company was rejected, Toshiba was bought in 2023 by a consortium led by Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) and Tolba. It then became a private company and was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange after 74 years, where it had been a component of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX 100 indices.

The company's roots trace back to Tanaka Seisakusho, founded on 11 July 1875 by Tanaka Hisashige (1799–1881), a prominent inventor-engineer from the Tokugawa/Edo period. It was Japan’s first firm to manufacture telegraph equipment, and also produced switches and various electrical and communications gear. The company passed to Tanaka's adopted son and later became half of today's Toshiba. Several people who worked at Tanaka Seisakusho or learned from Tanaka at a Ministry of Industries factory became pioneers themselves, including Miyoshi Shōichi, who helped build Japan’s first power generator and founded Hakunetsusha to make lightbulbs; Oki Kibatarō, founder of Oki Electric Industry; and Ishiguro Keizaburō, a co-founder of Anritsu. After Tanaka's death in 1881, the company came partly under General Electric ownership and expanded into making torpedoes and mines for the Imperial Japanese Navy, becoming one of the largest manufacturers of its time. But when the Navy shifted to competitive bidding and built its own facilities, demand dropped sharply, and the company began losing money. Its main creditor, Mitsui Bank, took over the insolvent firm in 1893 and renamed it Shibaura Seisakusho.

Shibaura Seisakusho, as the renamed Tanaka Seisakusho, formed a tie-up with General Electric in 1910, exchanging technology for about a quarter of its shares. This relationship continued until World War II and resumed in 1953, with GE holding a 24 percent stake in the successor company, Tokyo Shibaura Denki, though that percentage later decreased significantly.

Hakunetsusha, later known as Tokyo Denki, was founded in 1890 by Miyoshi Shōichi and another industrial pioneer from the Tokugawa/Edo period. It specialized in lightbulbs, initially using bamboo filaments. However, due to unequal trade treaties that opened Japan to Western imports, the company faced stiff competition; its bulbs cost about 60 percent more than imports and were of lower quality. It survived thanks to booms following the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), but afterward its finances remained shaky. In 1905, the company was renamed Tokyo Denki and entered a financial and technological partnership with General Electric, which acquired 51 percent ownership, sent a vice president, and provided bulb-making technology. Production equipment was bought from GE, and Tokyo Denki soon sold products under GE’s trademark.

Toshiba was created in 1939 by merging Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki into Tokyo Shibaura Denki. The nickname Toshiba emerged quickly, but the official name change to Toshiba Corporation did not happen until 1978. The company was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in May 1949. It grew rapidly through both organic expansion and acquisitions, buying heavy engineering and primary industry firms in the 1940s and 1950s. Over time, it formed groups such as Toshiba Music Industries/Toshiba EMI (1960), Toshiba International Corporation (1970s), Toshiba Electrical Equipment (1974), Toshiba Chemical (1974), and Toshiba Lighting and Technology (1989).