Ōfuna
Ōfuna Kōgaku-Kikai Seisakusho (大船光学機械製作所) was a Japanese camera maker, which also used the English name Ofuna Optical Instrument Manufacturing Co., Ltd.[1] It marketed a total of four cameras after the second world war.
The company originated during the war, when it started as a factory of Tomioka in Kamakura (the historic city, now effectively a distant southern suburb of Tokyo).[2] The factory was precisely located in the town of Dai, immediately to the north of the main city, in a zone which is commonly known as Ōfuna, hence the name of the company.[3] The factory produced binoculars and other military optics.[4] Tomioka's main factory (in Yukigaya-Ōtsuka, Tokyo) was destroyed by bombing toward the end of the war, and when the war ended Tomioka moved to a western outer suburb of Tokyo. Its Kamakura factory, which had escaped unscathed, raised capital independently and became a separate company.[5]
Camera list
Other
- E-Ofunar 7.5cm f/3.5 enlarging lens
- E-Ofunar 5cm f/3.5 enlarging lens
Notes
- ↑ English name visible in an advertisement reproduced in Hagiya, p.162 of Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari. The translation "Ofuna Optical and Mechanical Works" given in Lewis, p.82, was certainly not used by the company.
- ↑ Hagiya, p.149 of Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari. Lewis, p.82, says that Ōfuna was "a World War II subsidiary of Nippon Kogaku", apparently by mistake.
- ↑ Geographic extension of Ōfuna: Ōfuna in the Japanese Wikipedia.
- ↑ Hagiya, p.149 of Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari.
- ↑ Hagiya, p.150 of Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari.
Sources / further reading
- Hagiya Takeshi (萩谷剛). "Ōfuna Kōgaku no kamera: Kamera kara kōgaku heiki e" (大船光学のカメラ：カメラから光学兵器へ, The cameras of Ōfuna Kōgaku: From cameras to military optics). Chapter 8 of Zunō kamera tanjō: Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari (ズノーカメラ誕生：戦後国産カメラ10物語, The birth of the Zunow camera: Ten stories of postwar Japanese camera makers). Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1999. ISBN 4-257-12023-1. Originally published in Kamera Rebyū: Kurashikku Kamera Senka (カメラレビュー クラシックカメラ専科) / Camera Review: All about Historical Cameras no.39, September 1996. ISBN 4-257-13007-5. Modan kurashikku renzu-hen (特集：モダンクラシックレンズ編, Modern classic lenses)..
- Lewis, Gordon, ed. The History of the Japanese Camera. Rochester, N.Y.: George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography & Film, 1991. ISBN 0-935398-17-1 (paper), 0-935398-16-3 (hard). P.82.
Links
In Japanese:
- Advertisement by Ofuna dated 1954, reproduced in Shashin-Bako, showing E-Ofunar enlarging lenses
