Biography|Masamichi Kogai — Born in This City Under Yatsugatake

People treat later Mazda presidents as Hiroshima men by default.

Masamichi Kogai was born on 24 August 1954 in Chino, Nagano, on the west slope of the Yatsugatake range.

The family house is not a public site, so this pin sits at the city hall on Tsukahara rather than at a private door.

Official Mazda officer profiles and the Japanese biographical record both list Chino as the birthplace.

His father worked as an engineer for Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, the old Dendenkosha.

That trade, more than any car in the driveway, is what first pulled him toward making things.

There was no family car in the Chino years.

The first cars he sat in belonged to classmates after he reached Sendai.

Chino remains the origin printed on later company curricula vitae issued for him.

The hall here is a later civic building.

It is still the public address of the city that claims the birth.

A visitor who wants the childhood street will not find it marked.

What stands on this block is the municipal office at 2-6-1 Tsukahara, the place the city uses to speak for itself.

From here the road west leads toward Suwa.

The road east climbs toward Yatsugatake.

Neither road is the career.

The career starts only after Matsumoto and Sendai.

This pin is the first fact that does not move: 24 August 1954, Chino.

Photo: Kouchiumi, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons