JRC Brand Guidelines: Japan Radio’s 1915 Radiotelegraph Start, Marine Radar & Nisshinbo

A radiotelegraph maker founded in 1915.

JRC is the short form of Japan Radio Co., Ltd., known in Japanese as Nihon Musen. The company’s own timeline dates it to December 1915, when an anonymous association called Nippon Radiotelegraph Manufacturing Co. was formed in Tokyo. Its centenary history says four men set it up, and names two of them, Akira Kashima and Shunkichi Kimura, as visionaries who wanted to design and make radiotelegraph equipment in Japan rather than buy it abroad.

The business became a limited company in March 1917, and the company says its first product, a quenched-spark radiotelegraph unit, followed in December 1916; its first vacuum tube came in 1918. In February 1920 it was reorganised as Nippon Radio Telegraph and Telephone Co., and in April 1924 it signed a contract on capital and technology with Telefunken, the German radio maker, according to its timeline. Broadcasting followed: the company lists a receiver for weather broadcasts in 1922, a 500-watt valve transmitter in 1923 and a prize-winning radio receiver at a national competition in 1930.

In January 1930 its head office and factory moved to new buildings in Osaki, Tokyo, and in July 1938 the factory moved again, to Mitaka, in western Tokyo, where the company still keeps an office. In December 1942 it took the name Japan Radio Co., Ltd.

The war years are part of that record. The company’s centenary history says branch factories were opened in those years “to expand productivity and prepare for the controlled economy during the war,” and that it pressed on with radio communication and radar; it dates its first cavity magnetron, the valve at the heart of microwave radar, to 1939. English Wikipedia’s history of wartime radar, citing Raymond Watson’s Radar Origins Worldwide (2009), says JRC had long worked with the Imperial Japanese Navy’s technical research institute on magnetrons, and that in early 1941 it was given a contract to design and build a microwave surface-search radar for warships, the Type 22, first fitted to two destroyers in March 1942.

From echo sounders to integrated bridges.

After the war the company says it “restarted the business under a new trademark” and turned wartime technology to civilian use. Its timeline dates the JRC logo to December 1945 and records a fresh start as a “secondary corporation” in October 1949, the same year it lists the founding of Nagano Japan Radio and Ueda Japan Radio as separate companies. Its shares were listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in February 1953.

Marine electronics became a core line. The company lists what it calls Japan’s first ultrasonic sounding equipment in November 1948 and Japan’s first 9 GHz marine radar in December 1952, followed by a transistorised LORAN receiver in 1960, a ship earth station for the international maritime satellite system in 1975 and a radio range for the GMDSS, the global maritime distress and safety system, in 1991. In 1983, it says, it held the top global share in Inmarsat ship earth stations; that is the company’s own claim. Its 2010 milestone was a 9 GHz solid-state marine radar.

Its current navigation pages are organised by instrument, with ranges such as the JMR-9200/7200 radar series, the JAN-9201/7201 ECDIS electronic chart systems and the JCY-1900 voyage data recorder, alongside speed logs, echo sounders, AIS and GPS compasses. The same site groups satellite communications, GMDSS radio, fishing equipment, port systems and offshore wind work under its marine business, and it also sells weather radar, broadcast systems and simulators on land.

The company widened its marine reach through Europe. Alphatron Marine became a consolidated subsidiary in December 2013 and wholly owned in October 2016, by the company’s timeline, and ProNav AS followed in July 2018. A July 2014 press release carried by The Maritime Executive previewed joint JRC and Alphatron integrated bridges for the SMM 2014 trade fair, including a one-man bridge with three 46-inch displays; in September 2020 MarineLink reported that “JRC/Alphatron Marine” was moving distributor training online through a Global Training Academy portal.

Design and documentation.

Marine equipment makers sell to shipyards, shipowners and operators rather than to the public, and their identities reflect that. Their marks have long histories of their own: Schottel’s square S has been in use since the 1980s, its centenary history says, and Becker Marine Systems introduced its present logo with its new name in 2001, by the company’s account. The palettes in this guide are our own interpretation, in sea-going blues with warm accents, and none is taken from a company’s files.

The products themselves carry much of the visual weight. Thrusters, rudder propellers, rudders, deck machinery and bridge systems appear in this guide only as the companies publish and describe them, and their scale is part of the story: a regional magazine described one Schottel drive in Wismar in 2021 as twelve metres long once assembled.

Products are presented by vessel type as well as by name. Schottel says its RudderPropeller is used in more than 120 vessel types, from harbour tugs to ferries and offshore ships, and Becker presents rudders, nozzles and steering gear as parts of a single manoeuvring system for a given ship. Service matters as much as sale: both companies describe networks of subsidiaries and offices across Europe, Asia and the Americas, and German Wikipedia lists fourteen Schottel sales and service companies, from Brazil to South Korea.

Newer pages cover data. Schottel lists condition monitoring and data platforms among its products, and Becker sells monitoring systems for steering and rudder bearings. Trade fairs remain a fixed point in the calendar: Becker’s own history records a meeting at Nor-Shipping in Oslo that changed its management in 2001, and in 2022 Schottel’s holding company announced an agreement there, a trade paper reported.

Initials adopted in December 1945.

JRC’s ownership has changed in two steps. In December 2010 it became a consolidated subsidiary of Nisshinbo Holdings, and in October 2017 a wholly owned subsidiary, according to its timeline; the company profile names Nisshinbo Holdings as parent and gives its head office as Nakano Central Park East in Nakano, Tokyo, where English Wikipedia also places it. The company’s timeline also records New Japan Radio, set up in December 1961 as a joint venture with the American firm Raytheon.

On manufacturing, the company’s timeline lists a Saitama plant opened in 1982, a production building completed in 2015 and a Kawagoe plant opened in August 2016, and it made Nagano Japan Radio and Ueda Japan Radio wholly owned subsidiaries in March 2016. The company does not say on these pages which instruments are built at which site, so this guide does not either.

Outside shipping, the brand has reached other buyers. The company lists sound systems delivered for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and a car-navigation GPS receiver in 1990, and English Wikipedia notes that JRC built amateur radio transceivers, including the JST-245, until 2002. The constant across those products is the three-letter mark the company adopted in 1945, which is still the name it trades under.

For a design guide, JRC shows a radio maker whose initials outlasted three company names and a century of changing products. Compare Furuno, another Japanese marine electronics maker, and Kelvin Hughes, a British name in marine radar. For this guide we use a deep navy, a pale sea mist and a signal red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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