Industry History | Bridgestone — The Mother Plant on Kyomachi, Kurume
· 1931-3
Personal memoryBy kevin · · Report an issue
Find memories left by people near you.
Distribute Bounty
This will distribute the bounty equally among all qualifying memories. This action cannot be undone.
Cancel Bounty
Are you sure you want to cancel this bounty? The remaining amount will be refunded to your account.
Success!
Operation completed successfully.
Error
Something went wrong.
Industry History | Bridgestone — The Mother Plant on Kyomachi, Kurume
kevin
People treat Bridgestone as a Tokyo headquarters and a global tyre brand that arrived already listed.
The company was formed here, in Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture, on 1 March 1931.
Shojiro Ishibashi spun the tyre division out of Nihon Tabi, the family sock-and-jikatabi works he had taken over as a teenager. The first tyre had already been built on 9 April 1930.
The new papers named Bridgestone Tire Co., Ltd., an English reversal of his own surname, which means stone bridge.
The Kurume plant at 105 Kyomachi, three minutes on foot from JR Kurume Station and along the Chikugo River, became the mother works. Full-scale production started in 1934.
The early years were spent learning how to make a tyre with Japanese capital and Japanese process knowledge at a time when most of the domestic market still ran on imported rubber.
Head office moved to Tokyo in 1937. The wartime name was Nippon Tire.
The Bridgestone name returned in 1951. Shares listed on the Tokyo and Osaka exchanges in 1961.
The founder died in 1976.
The plant is still at this address. Bridgestone still calls it the mother plant.
It covers about 430,000 square metres and still builds passenger, light-truck, aircraft, and motorsport tyres. In 1956 the company marked its twenty-fifth year by giving Kurume the Ishibashi Cultural Center.
The Nikkei 225 company still dates its founding to this river city and this March filing.
Photo: Soramimi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
changes?
delete this memory?
We detected that you have a Blox in your crypto wallet! We will import the Blox into your account.
Click on done below to complete the import.
Welcome Back!
Sign in to preserve cherished moments
Don't have an account?
Welcome!!
Sign up and start preserving cherished moments
?
?
Choose your payment method
Buy with Metablox Credit
Do you want to mint Blox with Metablox Credit?
Which Crypto would you like to use?
Purchase Confirmed!
Your Blox is being minted on-chain and will appear in your profile shortly.
Log in or sign up to claim your Blox.
How many credits do you want to buy?
$100 USD = 1 Metablox Credit = 1 Blox.
Use Metablox Credit to mint any Blox you want on the map.
expand_more